Watched all 50 episodes of China's The Legend of Bruce Lee (2008). It opens, in black-and-white, with the aftermath of Bruce Lee's death in 1973 and speculations about the cause of his death, then segues in color to the beginning of his life story as a young man about to enter a school cha-cha competition. The entire series is in Mandarin, including the dialogue of the foreign performers. The dubbing is excellent, including the utterances of babies and children. Despite grammatical errors the subtitles are also commendable. They thoroughly convey not only the depths of Bruce Lee's mind but also the Tao of Jeet Kune Do.

Most of the cast members are real martial artists and only actors second, but they deliver both martial arts and acting very well. There is no melodrama in this movie, only genuine drama. The longer you watch Danny Chan as Bruce Lee, the more he looks like Bruce Lee, and you end up believing that he IS Bruce Lee. The only discombobulating factor to me was that, aside from the names of Bruce Lee's family members and close circle of friends, all other names have been changed--and casting deliberately avoided selecting performers who looked like the actual persons they were playing. It took me several episodes, for example, to figure out that the character Hoffman in the movie was Chuck Norris.

The movie excludes Bruce Lee's boyhood as a child actor and begins with his high school years as a bullied teen and his struggle to excel as a martial artist. Approximately THREE-FOURTHS of the movie is devoted to this, with very detailed martial arts instructions, exercises, and great fight scenes. If you aren't into either martial arts or into Bruce Lee, you might tend to grow impatient with the progress of the movie. If you stick through it, you will have to agree that this is the definitive Bruce Lee biography to watch. You will fall in love with Bruce Lee--and he isn't even acting in it! The series contains the origins of many of the elements of Bruce Lee's future movies: the jade pendant that later on figures in The Big Boss, the phrase "Sick Man of East Asia" that is later used in Fist of Fury, Bruce Lee's  sense of humor and Seattle's Ruby Chinese Restaurant that becomes the setting of Way of the Dragon, and the origins of "Be Water, My Friend". It is one of the best projects that Shannon Lee, as executive producer, ever undertook. 

There is, however, the intentional effort to romanticize and glamorize Bruce Lee, as there has always been in the biographies of all national heroes, religious leaders, and saints. Many of the facts and details mentioned in Matthew Polly's Bruce Lee: A Life are glossed over, and I suspect that a lot of tweaking was made in the service of premise, conflict, and cinematic art. There are glitches, such as a lot of tea being spilled in close-ups and some costume concessions--in Episode 11 A Ming, Wang Linshao's right-hand man, is wearing a Justin Timberlake (born 1981) T-shirt, and this was set in the 1960s! In Episode 45 there is a chair cushion that moves all by itself and was extremely disturbing to me

While there is an effort to reconstruct Bruce Lee's life as that of a Chinese national hero's, the movie is really about a human being with dreams and frustrations. The production appears laid-back but is actually lavish in its own way, especially in terms of setting and crowd scenes. Written by Qian Linsen and Zhang Jianguang and directed by Lee Moon-ki, it is an epic revolving around an individual created by persons who not only know quality drama but also have a deep knowledge of and passion for martial arts.

Only in the middle of Episode 36 do we see Bruce Lee offered by producer "George" (Stirling Silliphant) to be filmed and be in a movie. In Episode 41, nine episodes away from the end of the series, we see Kato of The Green Hornet , the beginnings of Golden Harvest's The Big Boss, and the aborted Silent Flute. In Episode 43 Silent Flute falls through, The Big Boss begins shooting in Thailand, and Bruce' s wife,  Linda, gives birth to their second child, Shannon. In Episode 45 Fist of Fury begins shooting and Bruce's Uncle Shao passes away. In Episode 45, Way of the Dragon is shot by Golden Harvest's Concord Production, Inc. In Episode 48 are the beginnings of The Game of Death and Enter the Dragon. Episode 49 is about Ip Man's funeral. Episode 50, the last episode, is magnificent. The death scene is beautifully handled.

This movie screens like the reading of a thick, juicy novel. It is a journey through the life of arrogant, impatient, ambitious Bruce Lee, whose efforts pay off in the end. At the very least it was fascinating to me to visually travel through the streets and houses that Bruce Lee actually walked in. Other biographical movies about Bruce Lee pale beside this one, for they all tried too hard to be metaphysical and ended up being pretentious. One such movie even attempted to analyze Bruce Lee's personality in the light of Jungian psychology!

This is a beautifully told story about the greatest warrior of the 20th century.