Purely Joyful Movie!

just watch it!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Brandon Lee was offered the lead in this rather routine actioner and was apparently reluctant to accept, not knowing how well he would be received as a successor to his now-legendary father. The response was a positive one. Brandon showed himself to be a good actor, as did co-star Michael Fitzgerald Wong in an early role as a smooth baddie, and Brandon also showed off some impressive martial arts chops. The fight scenes are the main reason to watch this movie at this point. The double-crossed- by-my-best-friend-now-I-have-to-get-revenge plot line has been done to death by now and it was not exactly fresh stuff at the time (1986). This one, like Rapid Fire, shows off Brandon as an 80s action hero who could fight, do stunts and act too. He was evolving into an international action star and had he survived the accident on the set of The Crow, that one role would have made him an A-lister. Brandon Lee made so few movies by the time of his death that every one is a curiosity, although The Crow is the only one that is actually really good. Oh, what might have been. Be warned that most of the dialogue is in Cantonese, which neither the California raised Brandon nor New York City native Michael could speak. If you read their lips, they were actually speaking English and post- synched into Cantonese by actors who sounded nothing like them. Of course, when a scene requires them to actually speak English, instead of using their own voices, the editors dubbed in English dialogue using yet another actor who had a thick accent and sounded even less like them! You would think the producers would take advantage of having English speaking actors around to dub their own English dialogue, but it is instructive of the high-speed factory approach to film making common in Hong Kong at the time that this was not done. Production units and editors had little contact with one another, and in any case one or the other used whatever talent was on hand at the time rather than looking for opportunities to refine the finished product.

Brandon Lee stars as Brandon Ma, a waiter who is set up for man slaughter by his "best friend" Michael (Michael Wong) while on the inside, Michael tries to rape Brandon's girlfriend and it comes to surface that Michael set Brandon up. After getting out of prison Brandon tries to live a normal life but Michael kidnaps Brandon's girlfriend and son (Conceived before Brandon's prison stay.) Brandon is given no choice but to settle the score. Legacy Of Rage has its share of plausibility issues (Why the hell does Brandon Lee call up Michael Wong to let him know he's coming for him?) but it is a decent film. I liked The Crow the best but this is his second best movie to date. (Though considering the fact that Showdown In Little Tokyo is third place, this says very little.) The main flaw is that the movie takes too long to set up its premise. There is just too many sequences of Brandon Lee going fishing, too many scenes of Brandon Lee running after a bus, too many escape attempts from prison and that is what hurts the movie. That being said the shootouts (In particular the finale) are well staged and very exciting. Interestingly though Brandon Lee's martial arts ability aren't very well used, indeed the fight between Brandon Lee and Bolo Yeung is over like 5 seconds! The movie gets most of its mileage out of the heroic bloodshed angle, mainly in the relationship between Brandon Lee and Wai-Man Chan (Four Eyes) which provides the movie with its heroic bloodshed moments. Also the final shootout alone makes this rise above mediocrity. So while Legacy Of Rage isn't in the league of Hard Boiled, it is at least a perfectly decent movie.* *1/2 out of 4-(Pretty Good)

Made by D & B Films (no need to thank me), "Long zai jiang hu" was the first movie I saw with Brandon Lee - unlike the other posters, I actually saw it when it came out - and it was ultimately nothing too special, but all of the action stars of the past and present have had to work their way up, and it was certainly better than "Rapid Fire" and "Showdown In Little Tokyo" (which was admittedly entertaining in a cheap way, Tia Carrere's obvious body double and the snuff video scene with that gorgeous blonde notwithstanding).The action's okay, and the scene where our hero bursts a villain's eye with a garotte still makes me wince 16 years later, but the best bit is when our hero visits a wimpy friend to get some armed help; wimpy friend says "I only have these," and unveils an armoury that would give Charlton Heston wet dreams. Still, you do wonder what would have happened had Brandon lived.

This is your typical actioner from Hong Kong with hardly any plot and lots of guns and martial arts action. This was Brandon Lee's first movie so that's of special note and also has Bolo who was in Enter the Dragon with Bruce. Brandon had yet to polish his martial arts skills like he displayed in Rapid Fire so the fight scenes kind of look robotic. If you're a Brandon Lee fan then I recommend watching at least once. If not only watch it if just about any action film will satisfy you.