Bruce lee the last dragon full movie
Remember the days when this was the way you listened to music on the go? No? GET OFF MY LAWN. It’s even worse when you consider that (allegedly) a young Wesley Snipes, Laurence Fishburne and even Denzel Washington were all up for the lead role at one point. It also doesn’t help that Taimak was clearly not a trained actor, which shows in every scene. (There’s a running joke that his 12 year old brother has to constantly teach him how sex works.) That makes his romance with former Prince muse and NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE star Vanity even weirder, almost like she’s babysitting the guy. He doesn’t know basic slang, common pop culture, or any knowledge about girls, but he lives with his family who seem like normal people. The script portrays him as a child unfamiliar with how anything works, like a martial arts savant with a learning disability. But that’s not the case-he’s just a weird guy that’s lived his entire life in New York City and is really in to kung fu. He’s written as a complete fish out of water, like he’s been in a foreign country for years training and is now just returning to the U.S.
Leroy has to be one of the most confounding characters in all of cinema. So it’s like the Force, if the Jedi turned in to lightsabers. All that’s left for him to do is take his Bruce Lee medallion and go on a journey to unlock The Glow, a mystical but very literal radiance that flows through your body and lets you wield ultimate power. When Leroy catches all of the arrows, his master announces that he has attained the final level of his training and become The Last Dragon. Leroy is also a martial arts master, something shown to us at the beginning when his sensei quite rudely starts firing arrows at him unannounced while he trains.
#Bruce lee the last dragon full movie movie#
Sadly, nobody wanted to make a LOGAN-style movie about old Zangief.īlack belt martial artist Taimak stars as Leroy Green aka Bruce Leeroy, a young black man obsessed with Asian culture, including walking around New York City at night wearing a rice paddy hat, eating popcorn with chopsticks, and speaking in fortune cookie sayings like The Sphinx from MYSTERY MEN (even when a girl is trying to wax on-wax off in to his pants). And given the musical nature and the fact that people occasionally glow, in some ways THE LAST DRAGON plays like XANADU with occasional punching and kicking. If you assume that Gordy’s main concern with this film was promoting his artists and selling records, with everything else playing second fiddle, some of the bizarre choices and lapses in quality almost make sense. Although I will forever defend the Razzie-nominated title song as being awesome. It explained so much-the plot, which revolved around the ins and outs of music industry characters that stand around to sing and dance in public for no reason and the unending supply of horrible songs that dominates the movie (including showing an entire DeBarge music video).
A movie where martial artists turn in to neon glowsticks when they believe in themselves.Īnd then I found the reason: THE LAST DRAGON was produced by Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records. A piece of art that combined cultural/racial stereotypes and expectations in ways that were both offensive and occasionally profound. One that mixed kung fu, blaxpoitation funk culture, and nonstop R&B music. I needed to know how such a movie could exist.
The first time I watched THE LAST DRAGON I was left absolutely awestruck. On his quest to possess the mystical power of The Glow, a young kung fu master must contend with the self-appointed Shogun of Harlem and a wannabe gangster trying to break in to the music industry. So I’m watching RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON and this happens…Ĭlearly this $100 million Disney movie was just an excuse to introduce younger audiences to the real LAST DRAGON… The Last Dragon (1985)