Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This film was marketed about Bruce Lee, and its more focused on Steve McQueen's character. After watching this film with so many inconsistencies about the history of Bruce Lee, I am baffled at how many mistakes this film made. Plus BL is a very unlike able character in this film. This film is not what it was marketed to be.

This would be a good popcorn flick if it didn't pretend to be a biopic. Instead, it takes Bruce Lee and makes him a one-dimensional Kobra Kai character. His rival serves somewhat as a foil to this, having more motivations and development early on. And while I don't doubt China Town had issues in this time period, the movie does use the White Savior trope to move the plot along. It is the self-centered white man who can see passed his own connection to his Chinese girlfriend who gets to be the hero and martyr for most of the movie. Lee and Wong at least seem to recognize that the problems go beyond one woman, and ramming heads doesn't solve that. Instead of addressing issues, this movie falls back on the idea that a fight fixes everything. If one fight doesn't, start another one. Protagonist McWhitebread has his shortsightedness vindicated when a mere request leads antagonists to shut down an entire brothel revenue stream over one multi-million dollar fight. The antagonist had no reason to go this extra mile or stay true to his word. This movie isn't about Bruce Lee's life. It's about how white America glorifies violence and laughs at the idea that self-discipline and helping others should be more important. I thought it would be vice versa, with Sifu Wong teaching Bruce Lee through both Wong's refusal to fight, and then his refusal to kill. Instead, the movie keeps going long enough that the poignancy of that is diluted. Lee's journey is relegated to a McGuffin serving to prove that in the end, a white man's anger and the glory of violence are more glamorous and important.

It really annoys me when people give a film 1/10 based on the fact that it doesn't meet their expectations or that it deviates from factual history.I have Bruce Lee's complete collection of films and every episode of the Green Hornet (including the two that he did for Batman), not to mention a dozen or so documentaries on the man. My last count of Jackie Chan's films that I have bought on DVD or Blu ray was at about 67, so I have acquired most of his body of work also. Besides all this, I have dozens of other martial arts films from various actors including Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, to name a few. To sum up, I feel that I am fairly experienced when it comes to watching martial arts films.So why did I title this review 'Unfairly Judged'? Because while 'Birth of the Dragon' may present Bruce Lee in an inaccurate way, and while it takes liberties with recorded history, there are several aspects that are well handled and deserving of more than a 1/10. Here's my top 3:1) The story is easy to follow, and everything was filmed and edited well. Worth at least a 5/10.2) The acting from everyone was very good, which is more than I can say for most of the films in my Bruce and Jackie collection. Again, this is worth at least a 5/10.3) For me, this third one is the real sore point: that Philip Ng and Yu Xia went through probably months of hard work choreographing the two main fight scenes, and in my opinion the results are worthwhile and enjoyable, despite moments where wires were used and a few scenes that were weird and beyond belief. To give these two gentlemen a 1/10 for their efforts is a total insult and shows a fair degree of ignorance from any reviewer.You may not be happy with the approach the director took (and I sure as hell know I wasn't), but by what right do you come here and trash the sweat and hard work the actors did in making it all come together? Considering the material they were given to work with, the actors did an excellent job all the way through - particularly with those lengthy fight scenes, and it is my opinion that anyone who would reward these efforts with a big fat 'F' does not deserve to be sitting in a cinema or in front of a TV.6/10 overall.

I was shocked to read some of the unfair reviews about this film and wonder if those individuals actually knew anything about Bruce Lee (the character), or even the struggles he faced in bringing Kung Fu to America, and the world for that matter. In my view, the characters in the film were well represented. People are quick to forget that Bruce Lee was rather cocky, super confident, and even more relative, open to change - hence why he learnt from the mistakes of his first encounter with Wong Jack Man and then felt compelled to re-evaluate his own style and incorporate other fighting techniques to form what we now know as "Jeet Kwon Do", or even "MMA" as people of today like to call it. The film, and the characters whom played both Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man, were spot on. The fighting scenes, build up and flow of the film was, in my view, superb and highly enjoyable. However, what I found even more rewarding was the portrayal of Bruce Lee's fears and the eventual change the character displayed after his fight with Shaolin Master Wong Jack Man, as opposed to the Jason Scott Lee's version back in the 1990s, which was rather limited. I liked the part after the fight when Bruce Lee had his hand in ice-water admitting how the Shaolin master could have broken his (Bruce Lee's) neck if he wanted to and how Bruce Lee felt that the fight took too long. Another particular aspect on the same scene was how it portrayed how Bruce Lee was Learning his opponent's style while engaging in this battle to eventually counter the Shaolin Master and reverse his advantage, eventually making him respect how adaptable and experience Bruce Lee was at the end of the first fight scene. I liked this film as it covered many unanswered questions, was extremely enjoyable to watch and was played very well by all characters. Those who were waiting for a "Fist of Fury" or "Enter the dragon" type of film should realise that this film was not intended to follow that type of story, but to answer some deep questions about Bruce Lee's real experience, pressures and concerns in getting to the point of when he eventually man "Enter the dragon". I thoroughly liked this film and would love to see a sequel!