Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story vs. Charlie Chan in the Chinese Cat

Skottula

on 8/27/2015

Dragon may have been based upon the memoir of Bruce Lee's widow, Linda, but what Hollywood did to that story was just about as offensive as what Hollywood did to people of Asian heritage in its golden age - ironic, since this characterization was one of the things that supposedly upset Bruce Lee so as he came to learn of Hollywood's perspective of the time on Asian cultures. True, this wasn't Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's and certainly not Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan, but the notion that any gathering of Asians on a screen was going to result in a full-blown martial arts throwdown and that any situation Bruce Lee found himself in was going to result in a fist-fueled chop-socky throwdown wasn't helpful either. The fact that the film has an 83% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes is completely absurd. I know that the story of Bruce Lee is remarkable, so I figure the problem was either that Linda Lee Caldwell is an unreliable source or director Rob Cohen was not at all the person to tell that story, it would be a story that I would love to see remade with a more informed perspective on the culture and subject matter. Chinese Cat is your typical Charlie Chan fare - not a lot of depth and completely forgettable as a mystery. If you're not sold on the novelty of the series, it's a movie you can easily live your life without seeing. I give the win to Dragon, but I don't think I feel good about either of these movies winning.