Bruce Lee, My Brother

The film covers Bruce Lee's youth in Hong Kong: born in San Francisco, returning with his family, acting in films as a child, being expelled from school, street fights and learning wing chun. It ends in 1959 when he is sent to America at eighteen; the period in which he became famous is not in the film. Raymond Yip and Manfred Wong direct. Aarif Rahman plays Bruce Lee. It rests on the accounts of his siblings Robert and Phoebe Lee; the family supported the project, which is both the film's strength and its limit. What interests it is the family rather than the fighting. Lee's father was a Cantonese opera performer, and the relations at home, the question of money and the son's failure to find a direction are the real subject. Hong Kong at the end of the fifties is built in detail: the streets, the dance halls, the gang fights and the British colonial order. Aarif Rahman's physical resemblance was argued over and the performance was well received, bringing him an award. Its weakness is the admiring tone. The narrative builds Lee as the beginning of a legend and softens in the difficult scenes. Who it is for: anyone interested in Bruce Lee and viewers who like Hong Kong period film. Who it is not for: there is little fighting, the narrative sits in the biopic shape, and the famous period is not covered at all.