Fantastic Fest 2009: ‘The Legend is Alive’

It’s going to be extremely difficult for me to say anything good about this film. Straight up, it’s boring stinks, and was falsely advertised to me right before it started, which is probably a contributing factor to why I hate it so much.

‘The Legend is Alive’ is the story of a semi-retarded  Vietnamese  boy that is trained by his mother to be great at martial arts and leads him to believe that his father is Bruce Lee. This if course is a total lie, and from the talents of the cast, it’s a stretch even in the stunts department.

The biggest issue I have with this film is that for a movie being about martial arts, the first punch isn’t even thrown until well over an hour into the movie.

The idea that the main character loves his mother is drummed into your head so much that the entire first half feels repetitive. The main character how’s named after Bruce Lee, often learns the same lessons several times over at different ages, and almost the entire story is told in flash back.

The main plot of the movie is about how Bruce (not how you say his name in Vietnamese) meet’s a young girl named Trinh and how he tries to save her from danger. She’s young and rebellious, off to meet her online boyfriend for the first time. In reality he’s a pimp and plans on putting her to work in his brothel. Bruce wants to save her, but most of the time he just curls up in a ball and gets the crap beat out of him, it’s frustrating.

By the time Bruce really does unleash on the villains I had lost interest completely. The choreography is good, as good as it can be, but the  cinematography completely changes and not for the better. The camera freezes on certain moments right before certain blows. The camera is also way to close to the action, not letting you get a good idea of how good a fighter Bruce really is.