Birth of the Dragon

[GeneChing]

Any JDK in it at all ??

No, not specifically. Keep in mind that, at least according to the generally accepted history, JKD gets invented after the Wong Jack Man match. Philip uses a lot of stylized Wing Chun (plenty of chain punches) and of course, the 1-inch punch. Xia Yu is mostly movie wushu.

[Jimbo]

Thanks for the review, Gene. However, I skipped was the spoiler alert. I was thinking of seeing it yesterday (I work weekends), but chose instead to catch the anime movie 'In this Corner of the World', which is in very limited release. I rarely go to theaters anymore, but I will be catching BOTD soon.

I'm not surprised that Corey Yuen is the choreographer. He seems to be the general go-to man for American and European films who want HK-style choreography. I'm kinda mixed about Corey Yuen's choreo. Some of his work is great, while other times he phones it in. A lot of his fight scenes begin great but fizzle out at the end. We'll see...

[Jimbo]

Well, I got to see it, and I found it entertaining. Philip Ng really had the c0cky Bruce Lee mannerisms down, as well as his way of speaking.

I didn't go in expecting an historically accurate account, so I wasn't disappointed. I agree with Gene that the fortune cookie dialogue of the WJM character was a bit too much. I seriously doubt even a REAL (as opposed to commercial) Shaolin monk would speak like that. Plus, I seriously doubt that a monk fresh off the boat from China in 1964 would understand the expression "kick @ss." Not that any Shaolin monks would have come to the U.S. in 1964.

I also thought the depicted use of Mandarin in SF Chinatown was off. That and the fact that Wong Jack Man is a Cantonese pronunciation; in Mandarin it would be Huang Zemin. And they used the Cantonese words 'sifu' and 'kwoon'. But everything else was in Mandarin.

One of the anachronisms I can recall offhand is 'McKee' saying "Nah, I'm good." I'm pretty sure that wasn't an expression for "I'm fine" until maybe the '90s (or later?). Another anachronism is when a thug mentions "chop-sockies", a derogatory American term for kung fu movies that wasn't coined until about 10 years later. Kinda like when the Eric Forman character on That '70s Show said, "FYI..."

One really weird thing was the 'movie' that BL was filming. BL was not filming any movies during his Oakland/SF period, and certainly not prior to the WJM fight.

BL mentions he married a Caucasian woman, but she's never seen, and from the movie you'd think BL was a bachelor. I suppose the filmmakers didn't want to get sued by Linda or Shannon?

I did like that WJM wasn't depicted as 'the bad guy' or a fool. Instead, he is depicted almost as a saint. I wonder what his students thought of it, not that's it's any of my business.

They edited out the scenes from the first trailer I saw, where 'McKee' is narrating, and BL finds the him sleeping in an alley and invites him inside to learn kung fu. I liked the fact that McKee was NOT made the central figure of the movie.

All that aside, it was better than I expected. Just take it as a heavily fictionalization account of a very small-time incident, that's been blown up into epic proportions over the decades.

I do hope that this gives Philip Ng the exposure to become a well-known name in the West, in much the way that Jet Li and Donnie Yen have. IMO, he certainly has the acting chops, the MA skills, and the charisma to do so.