Image of Bruce Lee (1978)

Image of Bruce Lee (1978)
Aka: Storming Attacks
Chinese title: 猛男大賊胭脂虎
Translation: Macho Thief, Rouge Tiger

 

Starring: Ho Tsung-Tao (as Bruce Li), Dana, John Cheung Ng-Long, Bolo Yeung Sze, Mark Cheung Lui, Han Ying-Chieh, Luk Chu-Sek
Director: Richard Yeung Kuen
Action Director: Sham Chin-Bo, Wong Mei

Image of Bruce Lee was Bruce Li’s last released film in 1978, an extremely prolific and successful year for the genre as a whole. That year saw Mr. Ho Tsung-Tao fight gorillas, lock horns with snake cults in Oceania, and even do a pseudo-autobiography. That last one turned out to be one of the best films in a career based mainly around exploiting the name of a guy who’d barely been dead for half a decade! In Image of Bruce Lee, the Brucesploitation angle is fairly subdued: Bruce Li wears a yellow tracksuit in the first scene and there’s a scene where one character says that Li looks like Bruce Lee and should get into the film industry. Beyond that, it’s a standard police caper in which heroes and villains alike just happen to fight with their fists 98% of the time.

Bruce Li plays Captain Wei Man, a special tactics team leader for the Hong Kong Police. In the first scene, he unsuccessfully tries to save a man from throwing himself from a building. Said jumper was financially ruined after he unwittingly sold some valuable diamonds for counterfeit bills. Wei Man is ultimately teamed up with another cop, Chang Li (Mark Cheung, who staged the action for the late Benny Chan’s Man Wanted), to bring down the counterfeit operation. The outfit is run by kung fu criminal Han Tin-Lung (Han Ying-Chieh of The Big Boss) and his son, Steven (John Cheung of Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow and Kung Fu Master Named Drunk Cat).

Those two are currently entertaining Kimura (Bolo Yeung, of Enter the Dragon and Chinese Hercules), the head of the counterfeiters’ Japanese branch. Kimura has brought the printing plates to Hong Kong for the next batch. They are now waiting for the delivery of the paper, to be carried out by Dana (Super Infra Man’s Dana, the stage name for Sam Suk-Yee), the daughter of a Japanese supplier. Most of the movie has one or both cops following a suspect and getting into a fight, following another suspect and getting into another fight, rinse and repeat. Oh, and Dana will occasionally doff her duds in front of the camera.

The action is fast and furious thanks to choreographers Wong Mei (The Four Shaolin Challengers and Bruce’s Deadly Fingers) and Sham Chin-Bo (Fists of Bruce Lee and The Gold Connection). The choreography style falls somewhere in between the “shapes” fighting that defined most kung fu movies in the late 70s and a more freewheeling modern style that Bruce Lee would have approved of. Villains Han Ying-Chieh and John Cheung especially feel like they stepped off the set of a period piece, put on some contemporary clothes, and kept on fighting the way they were before. Bruce Li fights a bit more like his namesake, although avoids his inspirations whoop-whoops, nose rubs and nunchaku. His punches are more economical than his opponents’ and his kicks are more tae kwon do than Southern Shaolin. There is also a fair bit of judo thrown in the fights, which is fun.

More the director’s fault than the choreographer’s, but the fights do get a little repetitive. Wherever Bruce Li or Mark Cheung follow a suspect, there are always three or four henchmen armed with 2x4s and bamboo poles to gang up on them. So the fights usually consist of one of the heroes engaging in complex choreography exchanges with one of the villains, broken up by more basic moves against the lackeys. There is a fight that breaks out in a karate dojo, Fist of Fury style, which I suppose gives the film more of a Brucesploitation flavor than it might have had otherwise. My favorite part about the action is that Bolo Yeung gets some of his best and most fighting for an old school film. In a lot of his old school appearances, he would usually show up, display his muscles, engage a character using basic hand techniques and kicks, and then lose. Bolo gets three good fights that revolve around his actual technique—Bolo was originally a taiqi quan practitioner—instead of his brawn. Just for that alone I give the film extra points.

Obviously, a movie like this scores neither as a realistic police procedural film or as anything resembling an exposé on the counterfeiting market. But as an excuse for Bruce Li and company and get into fights for 90 minutes, and for all those male fans who carried a torch for Dana after watching her in Super Infra Man, the film is a pleasant diversion.