Game of Death
AKA: Bruce Lee's Game of Death, Goodbye, Bruce Lee: His Last Game of Death
1978
Director: Robert Clouse
Stars: Bruce Lee, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Roy Chiao, Sammo Hung
Even though this is sometimes called Bruce Lee's last movie, he is in it for really only twenty minutes. While he was working on this film, he was called by Warner Bros. to start on Enter the Dragon. Lee, of course, died shortly before ETD's premiere, and so the rest of Game of Death was finished using Lee lookalikes and released some five years after "the dragon's" death. The result is actually pretty good, perhaps not suprisingly because the bits in which Lee appears are excellent. It's too bad the rest of the movie is such junk.
Lee (and his lookalikes) play Billy Tang, an actor who the Mafia for some reason want to control. When Billy refuses, the mob puts the squeeze on his girlfriend (some okay-looking gweilo with a horrible singing voice). Of course, Billy won't take that kind of crap and sets out to dish out some street justice. Really, the first two-thirds of this movie is pretty bad -- all of the actors (mostly gweilos) are pretty sorry, and the lookalike scam never really works. It doesn't help that the doubles aren't nearly as talented fighters as Lee himself. However, the final bit in the movie, where Lee has to climb up a building, fighting a different type of enemy on each floor, is outstanding and a true classic, right down to Lee's swank yellow jumpsuit. While the rest of Game of Death might test your patience, the ending provides a satisfying payoff.
RATING: 7
A review of the VCD for this movie can be found here