Game Of Death on DVD (1979)

Craig from durham [Highly rated reviewer] , 06/06/2005

bruce lee made some of this film before going off to make Enter The Dragon. When that film was finished, he planned to go back to completing Game of Death. But sadly he died.

I cant help but feel that if Bruce finished this film, it would have been his crowning glory.

Although the film was finally completed sum 8 years later by the director of enter the dragon using a double of lee, it is such a mess that it is only worth watching for the bruce lee footage alone.

Disc 2 has a lot of extras but the one peice that stands out is the unedited 40 min fight sequence. It is totally brilliant, with lee facing off against a 7 foot tall actor.

Get this and think what would have been....

  2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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Miztabungle from Middlesex , 29/11/2004

Skip to the last 25 minutes of this movie and save yourself cringe-worthy bad acting that attempts to hold together a hollow plot not worth the paper it was written on. Not that martial arts movies are renown for their plots, but if they’d at least thrown in a half decent fight in the first hour or so, it would have given the viewers something to keep them going.

Not even a mere shadow compared to the superb 'Enter the Dragon', Game of Death follows a long, tedious road of terrible dialogue, sloppy fights, not to mention the hilarious scene near the start with Bruce Lee’s face superimposed onto another body that has a towel draped around it’s neck. But the last 25 minutes of this movie seem to make it all worthwhile, but still too little, too late. So you finally get to see the real Bruce Lee – the scene with him using nunchukas is mesmerising, but it’s all over before you know it.

By the end of the movie, you’ll be wondering why they didn’t make a better job of it considering all the potential – the classic yellow jumpsuits and motorbikes that inspired Tarantino’s Kill Bill and the fact that they had one of celluloid’s greatest martial artists at their disposal…well, I guess some things were never meant to be.

  2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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HowieT from Surrey , 10/05/2005

For those out there who may not know the background, this was to be Bruce Lee’s fourth film. He had already filmed a number of the fight scenes when production was put on hold because he was called upon to do “Enter the Dragon”.

Some years after he died, this film was put together and billed as “Bruce Lee’s final film”. Ironically, not only did it totally ignore Lee’s original storyline/concept, but contained just a few minutes of actual Bruce Lee footage and resorted to using a look-alike (who actually looked nothing like him!). The result was/is a total mishmash of a film. Poor storyline, appalling editing, etc, etc. It deserves no more to be called a Bruce Lee film than any of the countless other films that jumped on the bandwagon at the time.

If you want an idea of what this film COULD have been, watch the bonus disc instead and see the true master in action.

  2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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A customer from uk , 24/11/2004

terrible film is completely redeemed by the absolute superiority of bruce lee's philosophy in the pagoda scenes at the end, which illustrates just why the depth of his kung fu surpasses even that of the other classic fighters and why he is a legend. avoid the edited version like the plague.

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

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Miztabungle from Middlesex , 29/11/2004

Skip to the last 25 minutes of this movie and save yourself cringe-worthy bad acting that attempts to hold together a hollow plot not worth the paper it was written on. Not that martial arts movies are renown for their plots, but if they’d at least thrown in a half decent fight in the first hour or so, it would have given the viewers something to keep them going.

Not even a mere shadow compared to the superb 'Enter the Dragon', Game of Death follows a long, tedious road of terrible dialogue, sloppy fights, not to mention the hilarious scene near the start with Bruce Lee’s face superimposed onto another body that has a towel draped around it’s neck. But the last 25 minutes of this movie seem to make it all worthwhile, but still too little, too late. So you finally get to see the real Bruce Lee – the scene with him using nunchukas is mesmerising, but it’s all over before you know it.

By the end of the movie, you’ll be wondering why they didn’t make a better job of it considering all the potential – the classic yellow jumpsuits and motorbikes that inspired Tarantino’s Kill Bill and the fact that they had one of celluloid’s greatest martial artists at their disposal…well, I guess some things were never meant to be.

  2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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