A travesty of film marketing justice, but not a bad film...

Our film tonight was Bruce Lee: The Invincible. It probably should be called The Invisible because, shock of shocks, Bruce Lee is nowhere to be found in this movie. That's probably a good thing, too.

The blurb:

Bruce Li and Michael Chan go head to head in this feature inspired by the martial arts legend. When a mercenary abuses the technique of Wonderful Escarpment, the Dragon has to set things right.

Note that this is Bruce Li, not Bruce Lee or Bruce Le. This guys looks a bit like Bruce Lee, and was even offered a job playing Bruce's stand-in after Lee's untimely death when Game of Death was being completed. Li turned it down as he did not feel worthy of such a part. Now, that's classy. And given the fact that Game of Death was such a stinkburger without Bruce Lee's further input, my respect for Bruce Li only goes up. In addition, keep in mind that "Bruce Li" was merely a screen name forced on him by producers. Chung Tao Ho (his real name) always felt that although he wanted to emulate Lee, he could never be him. He dropped the name after his film career ended twenty years ago, and is now running a gym in his native Taiwan.

It's hard to tell exactly what the plot is for this film. It started out with a guy attacking a teacher by mistake. It turns out they trained under the same master or something like that. The man exiles himself to Malaysia in shame to train to be better. He is attacked by a gang of thugs while having sex, but he makes short work of them in a nice quick fight in the forest.

There's a "B" story in here where a girl brings her boyfriend home to meet her folks on an island (presumably, also Malaysia). They are accosted on the beach by a trio of hoodlums, but the boyfriend knows his kung fu, too. By the way, you can tell it's Malaysia by the fact that all the thugs and hoodlums are wearing cut-offs. :-p

The boss of this gang falls for the girl, whose shopkeeper father looks a lot like Canadian actor Colin Mochrie. So, naturally, he sends his thugs to rough up the parents and kidnap the girl via an actual burlap sack! (I'm amazed she could fit in there... it was rather small) There's a brief full-frontal view of her granny panties as the boss tries to take advantage of her, but failing that, he beats her in typical villain fashion.

The boyfriend (who is, apparently, also her cousin) attempts futilely to rescue her, but after they get out of the boss's house, they catch up with them and he gets the snot beaten out of him and disappears.

Meanwhile, the teacher (from the beginning of the film) and Bruce Li show up to find the boyfriend/cousin and end up taking on the gang. There's a bust-up of a crooked casino, more beatings on the Colin Mochrie look-alike and plenty of fighting all around. All in all, not too bad, but it still hurts that they put Bruce Lee's name on it to sell the film. It could probably have carried fine on its own back in the day.

Pain rating: 2 Fingers of Death

Up tomorrow... Killer of Snakes, Fox of Shaolin