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Game of Death

Play trailer Poster for Game of Death R 1979 1h 42m Adventure Play Trailer Watchlist
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42% Tomatometer 12 Reviews 63% Popcornmeter 25,000+ Ratings
An actor (Bruce Lee) shot by gangsters fakes his death, has plastic surgery and seeks kung-fu revenge.
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Game of Death

Critics Reviews

View All (12) Critics Reviews
Almar Haflidason BBC.com ...the standard of the choreography is excellent, and the final 20 minutes - which are almost all of Bruce fighting - are well worth holding out for. Rated: 3/5 Sep 26, 2001 Full Review James Kendrick Q Network Film Desk appropriates Lee's completed fight footage and awkwardly weds it to a hackneyed plot in order to squeeze whatever profits could still be wrung from his legacy Rated: 1.5/4 Mar 8, 2021 Full Review Nicholas Bell IONCINEMA.com An all around unfortunate and ill-conceived endeavor, it's a Lee feature for completists only. Rated: 0.5/5 Aug 26, 2020 Full Review Matt Brunson Film Frenzy The majority of the rescued Lee footage comes at the end -- this part of the film is spectacular and almost makes up for the dreariness of everything that precedes it. Rated: 2/4 Aug 8, 2020 Full Review Ed Travis Cinapse Game Of Death would be an unconscionable tragedy if it weren't for those glorious moments when the true legend shines so brightly for one last fight. Aug 5, 2020 Full Review Heather Wixson Daily Dead If the game itself is haunted, which I'm supposing is plausible, there's nothing set up in Game of Death that would even insinuate that possibility, making for an experience that doesn't seem to make a lick of sense. Rated: 2/5 Mar 23, 2017 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Yash B The more I read about "Game of Death," the more I understand why it is the movie that it is. By nature, it is messy because essentially a plot was put together to make some footage Bruce Lee had shot make sense. I think the movie is super silly and ridiculous in a lot of ways, and for the first hour or so I just found myself a little frustrated by it. That being said, once the final act starts, and I actually get a chance to see Bruce Lee do what he did best, the movie is entertaining. This is easily the technically worst film I have seen from the Bruce Lee library, but it still features some great martial arts, despite it not being for a super long runtime. Overall, if the movie was much shorter and a little more effort was put into putting it together, I think there is something kind of fun and fascinatingly bizarre here, and worth seeing despite all the flaws. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 09/14/24 Full Review Liam D Bruce Lee’s last movie has some moments of entertainment but the bad script and the laughable ways them filming around the tragic death of the star makes it the only dud in his filmography Rated 2 out of 5 stars 04/28/24 Full Review DanTheMan 2 Game of Death is increasingly difficult to assign a rating to, on the one hand, it's a pretty routine action movie that happens to feature parts of an unfinished movie of the same name, while on the other extremely exploitative of Lee's death using footage from his actual funeral within the confines of this movie's plot. Director Robert Clouse seems almost against using any of Lee's previously shot footage. Instead, he limits most of Bruce's footage to the final act, which is only about 11 minutes in total and the occasional cut away to stock footage from Lee's previous movies married to a substandard revenge thriller. There's an attempt to hide the fact that the body doubles bear little resemblance to Bruce near the start of the movie but that quickly becomes less and less apparent as the movie goes on and by the end, you can see their faces plain as day. Oh and don't even get me started on Chris Kent's awful attempts to mimic Bruce's battle cries, I cringed so hard. Clouse seemed to be the wrong man to hire when it came to making this revised version of Game of Death, but he does deliver some great original action thanks in part to the choreography of Sammo Hun. It's just that the writing is on the whole abysmal married with some clumsy editing that often leaves many moments completely disorienting to the viewers. That being said, however, John Barry's music is sublime, it has that Bondian feel but is one of the best parts of the movie. I can't really recommend this version of Game of Death unless you are a die-hard completionist like myself, it's an all-around unfortunate and ill-conceived endeavour in an attempt to finish a legacy. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 08/04/23 Full Review Chris M But I wanna know how much of the movie did Bruce get done before he passed? Because watching this mess, I'm guessing not much. I was under the impression it was at least over half. But the actual footage from the movie is like maybe 10%, not counting the stock-footage from other movies. This movie came out for pure exploitation on the Bruce Lee craze that started after his death. As other wanna be Bruce Lees with similar names got movies. What became know as Bruceploitation. But this is the worse as they take advantage of the tiny bit he was able to film. What's more insulting is there's a sequel. It makes me sick. Hollywood hits a new low with this one. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 05/09/23 Full Review William J This is largely an unfinished film that only features Bruce Lee at the end when he is fighting the five fighters in the tower. Consequently, the only good part about this movie is the tower fight with Lee wearing the now famous yellow tracksuit and the yellow and black striped Onitsuka Tiger track shoes he wore with matching yellow nunchucks. The ending fight is worth watching but the beginning and middle can be passed over, especially since there is no resolution to the plot of why he is fighting in the first place. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/01/23 Full Review Matthew B Best of Movies/TV Series Collection Rated 5 out of 5 stars 12/19/22 Full Review Read all reviews
Game of Death

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Cast & Crew

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Movie Info

Synopsis An actor (Bruce Lee) shot by gangsters fakes his death, has plastic surgery and seeks kung-fu revenge.
Director
Robert Clouse
Producer
Raymond Chow Man-Wai
Screenwriter
Robert Clouse
Production Co
Columbia
Rating
R
Genre
Adventure
Original Language
Chinese
Release Date (Streaming)
Jan 24, 2017
Runtime
1h 42m
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