Audience Member
A detective who looks kinda like Bruce Lee tracks a counterfeiting ring in Hong Kong. Pretty standard kung fu stuff, distinguished mainly by an unusual amount of nudity.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It's one thing for a Bruceploitation film title to call itself as a sequel to a Bruce Lee movie (Chinese Connection 2) or even rip-off or reference another Bruce Lee movie title (Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger) but for a title to actually put the name "Bruce Lee" in it... well that's just a whole new low even by Bruceploitation standards!
Here we have another cheesy 70's urban martial arts film in the vein of Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger. The film opens with a rather unintentionally funny sequence with a man about to commit suicide by jumping off a building. In comes Bruce Li, a member of "special squad" (doesn't that term have the most attractive blah ring to it?), climbing up the building to save the jumpers life (Li is even adorning a yellow jump suit, no doubt a reference to Bruce Lee's yellow jump suit he wore in the few sequences he filmed for Game of Death). Hilariously while Li is trying to save the guy while jumping, he grabs his arm which just happens to be an artificial limb and it comes off! I've never seen a suicide sequence but so unintentionally funny! Apparently the guy committed suicide because he was paid with counterfeit money for diamonds. So Li and another cop are assigned to the case to track down the counterfeiter (who is briefed to Li in an god awfully boring slide show presentation!). Lots of fights and unintentional laughter ensue.
I have to admit that Li and his partner have to be the WORST cops ever. It seems every time they are tailing a character they get caught and then a short fight occurs. I kid you not this happens over a half a dozen times! Li follows guy in car, gets spotted, fight ensues. Li taking pictures of compound in a tree, gets caught, then a fight ensues. Our cops even plant a microphone in a suspects motel room, but they leave the thing in plain sight! Come on guys! However our villains aren't all that smart either. When they meet a contact at the airport, the contact says she will be wearing big sunglasses. Some clue this is, everyone in the 70's wore big sunglasses! She also even has the gale to put the sunglasses very obviously in front of her contacts. It's so goddamn obvious that the most inept pedestrian could see there was some fishy meeting going on. The villains even pull a dumbass James Bond antagonist stunt by tying up our cops in a room to die by gas, and then leave with no one watching the room to make sure they don't escape. Why didn't' they just shoot the bastards!
Overall the filmmakers seem to know exactly what they're making here. It's a Bruce Lee rip-off and they make no attempt to hide it. One character even tells our star Bruce Li that he should be a movie star because he looks exactly like Bruce Lee. Ironically I believe that's exactly how Bruce Li's career began with those very same words spoken to him. Fans of ultra cheesy kung fu cinema will find plenty to like but I wouldn't rank this better than Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger. That film has a little more flair in the directing and it was just overall more shameless entertainment.
Bonus Rant: One thing I did find strange about this film is that the American edit I have on DVD has no star or crew credits. There's an opening title card also showing the distributor and film rating, but no cast or crew credited. The end credits just simply say "The End". Hey guys, this may not be art but give the people credit where credit is due! They worked hard on this drivel!
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/17/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Not much fake Bruce Lee ingredients aside from the presence of Bolo Yeung/Hon Ying Kit and a stupid introduction which put to good use the Game of Death tracksuit. A fairly solid modern Kung Fu film otherwise with a sexy touch thanks to the presence of Dana.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
bruce li is in another title continues "bruce lee" movie. actor bruce li's character is wearing yellow outfit is reminded me of bruce lee's film "game of death" that bruce lee's character is wearing yellow outfit too. awesome of the martial arts movie with the best kung fu moment again and big fighting.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/22/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A pair of Hong Kong police inspectors, Dragon and Wang (Li and Leih), must break the counterfeiting ring of local crimelord Han (Han) before he completes a deal with Japanese organized crime and floods Hong Kong and Japan with fake United States dollars. Bands of Kung Fu fighters wait to beat on them around every corner, however.
"The Image of Bruce Lee" has a razor thin plot that exists only to get the main characters from one fight scene to the next. Unless you're watching the film because you're interested in staged martial arts fights, you're going to start getting bored after the second or third, because most of them are just like the one that happened a few minutes before. (Only two of the combats are remotely interesting--one where a Japanese gangster (playedby Bolo Yeun) takes on a bunch of Chinese hoods while using a pair of handcuffs as a slashing weapon, and another where Bruce Li take on the same gang of thugs a little later and ends up in a battle that seems like an early version of the sort of Prop Fu material that Jackie Chan would make his trademark a few years later. The rest just aren't all that good, even taking into account the period this movie dates from.)
An even bigger problem than the lackluster fight scenes is the fact that what little story we have is as boring as they are. Not only boring, but badly constructed. Li and Leih Police Inspectors Dragon and Wang) have got to be the very worst inspectors in all of Hong Kong, as they can't tail a suspect without getting spotted and getting into a fight, they can't conduct survaillance without getting spotted and getting into a fight, and they can't ask a suspect to come down to the station without violating all sorts of police procedures and getting into a fight. If played for laughs--and the film's opening scene makes you think that you're actually in for a comedy--these incompetent boobs might have made for amusing viewing, but this film takes itself so seriously that it doesn't even feature the Standard Issue Comic Relief Character that seemed to be a [i]must[/i] in films from this period. Although, I suppose the slutty femme fatale from England (whose clothes came off to treat the viewer to some full-frontal nudity whenever the film got [i]really[/i] boring might vaguely fill that slot. But not quite. This is one humorless movie... desptie the fact the man bad guy's gimmick is the throw silver coins so hard they imbed themselves deeply in wood and might thus presumable kill someone, even if he never shown doing so.)
Actually, the opening scene is probably the best part of the movie. Dragon scales the side of a building to save a man who is about to committ suicide, because he lost his business and reputation because of the counterfeiting ring Dragon will soon be called upon to break. Dragon's attempt ends in a blackly humorous way that didn't set the tone for the film, but should have.
All in all, "The Image of Bruce Lee" is one that you should probably avoid looking at.
(By the way, the title is drawn from a single line in the film, when its suggested that Inspector Dragon should become an actor because he looks like Bruce Lee. While I don't think he looks very much like Bruce Lee, Bruce Li DID spend much of his career in Bruceplotation movies. This is not one of those, so I suspect that line was an attempt at levity... that got the flm turned into a Bruceploitation movie when it was exported to America. There are no images of Bruce Lee that I noticed anywhere in the film.)
The Image of Bruce Lee (aka "Storming Attacks")
Starring: Bruce Li, Chang Leih, John Cheung, Yin-Chieh Han, Bolo Yeun, and Danna
Director: Kuen Yeung
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
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