Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee
Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee
| 21 January 2007 (USA)
Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee Trailers

In 1973, martial arts great Bruce Lee died, his final film, Game of Death, left unfinished. With the public hungry for more Lee, movie execs decide to find a replacement. This outrageous satire looks at the entire process, from the oddball candidates to the greed and racial motivations that drive the final decision. There's big business in the movies, and Finishing the Game skewers it with an eye for '70s detail.

Reviews
Aslana dalMare

I am not a particular fan of the martial arts genre or a Bruce Lee idolizer, but I absolutely loved this movie. The fact that it is billed as a comedy and is actually funny, and this one is very funny, underscored for me its subtle ridicule of Hollywood, their formula films and the entire assembly-line style of film making. Hollywood seems to treat Comedy as the Miscellaneous category - if you can't categorize it as a drama, a documentary, suspense, horror, action or history, then it must be a comedy. This one is genuinely funny, instead of yet another billed "comedy" that's really just one more money-grubber's yawn fest.This is also a wonderful but gentle poke at the entire 70's style of film and television, re-creating the tasteless idiocy of that decade's mainstream entertainment offerings, but in a manner that remains nostalgic, affectionate and respectful - like having an old hound dog that stinks just a bit and slobbers all over everyone but we still love him anyway.If you enjoy the Christopher Guest parody movies (I don't; I respect the effort but it's just not easy to get a laugh out of me - yet this movie got plenty) I think you will find this well worth seeing. Even the nudity is so blatantly gratuitous it qualifies as parody. If you're fed up with the standard crappy focus-group-oriented film-by-formula usually offered, you'll like this movie. If you want a good laugh, you'll like this movie. If you have a pulse and a sense of humor, you'll like this movie.

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Steyr808

There are very few movies I consider truly bad. I love B grades, I love cult films. I love chop sockies and Japanese sci fi from the 50s and 60s.I can watch almost anything and enjoy it.But there is one thing that is worse than a truly bad film. And that is a truly bad film that actually thinks it is a good film. And that is exactly what we have here. Unfunny, pointless crap that thinks it is clever.And apparently so do a few other people. If you are the vapid sort who finds art in a ordinary object simply because it is contained in a plexiglas cube you too may find this exercise in mundane satire brilliant.But if you are looking for comedy, an irreverent examination of the Brucesploitation phenomena or a martial arts spoof you will want to keep looking and not waste your time with this thief of life.

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Roland E. Zwick

Done in the style of a 1970s mockumentary, "Finishing the Game" is based on the premise that, when Bruce Lee died in 1973 at the age of 32, he left behind twelve minutes of footage for a movie entitled "The Game of Death." Determined to bring Lee's final dream to fruition, a group of dedicated filmmakers set out to find a replacement for the star in the hopes of finishing the project. "Finishing the Game" is a fictionalized account of that search (the actual movie was released in 1978).Unfortunately, beyond its spot-on '70s fashions and hairstyles, oh-so-groovy soundtrack and overall air of genial good-naturedness, "Finishing the Game" offers little of quality for anyone craving a good behind-the-scenes movie parody. Lacking both polish and finesse, the movie represents a major comedown for director Justin Lee after his stunning triumph with "Better Luck Tomorrow" a few years back. The half-hearted Josh Diamond screenplay scarcely makes an effort at being funny, and the concept itself is simply too thin to be successfully stretched out over even a relatively meager 84-minute-long running time.Barely flash-in-the-pan cameo appearances by the likes of James Franco, MC Hammer and Ron Jeremy do little to support an otherwise likable cast. And there isn't even any decent martial arts action to make the movie much fun for fans of the genre being satirized.

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dbborroughs

Mockumentary about the attempt by a film studio to finish Bruce Lee's Game of Death after Lee died leaving on 12 minutes of footage behind.Forget the real history of the Game of Death project, this film re-imagines it as having been produced by a Mickey Mouse studio who are desperate to cash in on the Bruce Lee craze. That actors would be dumb enough to think that acting as Lee's stand in would gain them fame is stretch. Worse is the bunch of losers they've assembled as candidates. An Indian doctor with an afro, a white guy, some one a foot taller than Lee and on and on, in to cliché of wrongness. The director of the new Lee film is the milquetoast son of the studio head's son. His assistant is a woman who makes her casting choices based on whether she wants to sleep with the actor. We have one actor's girlfriend who can't handle the pressure of being his girlfriend and his manager. The scenes of other films are mostly juvenile been there and done that sort. There is a good eye blink scene with Ron Jeremy and lots of topless women on a porno shoot, which strangely are the only real performances of the film. It might have worked for a five minute sketch but not for 90 minutes.I have no idea how this movie got made. I'm even more amazed that its gotten a theatrical release, and flabbergasted that IFC has picked it up. Frankly its the worst film I've seen from their releasing arm.While Time Out New York said that there are no laughs in the film I do have to say there are some, maybe five minutes of screen time, worth of jokes, including the Ron Jeremy stuff. Other than that this is just a an embarrassingly bad (and not really fun) movie that takes on a road accident quality that hypnotizes you for a few seconds before you speed off to something else since the carnage is too great.Easily one of the worst films of the year.

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