The first film and centerpiece of the ‘Game of Clones’ boxset from Severin films. I had read about ‘The Clones of Bruce Lee’ and how it was supposed to be a non stop, crazy, over the top action punch and mind melt fest for a good 15 years, and after finally getting into a bit more of a functional groove, I decided to finally crack the set open and give it a whirl…I was…underwhelmed.

The plots fairly straight forward, It opens with Bruce Lee dying. while undergoing emergency surgery, he dies. Enter Colin (from the FBI!) ((Hes…always referred to as ‘Colin…From the FBI.’ So I guess thats just his name…ANYWAY! Colins working for the FBI! and hes got an important mission to do! working closely with mad scientist and Egg/Human ‘Fly’ hybrid ‘Professor Lawrence’ the pair are on a mission…a mission…to CLONE BRUCE LEE!

With full hospital authorisation, Professor Lawrence enters the operating room, takes a syringe full of Bruce Lees blood and clones himself 3 Bruce Lees using fancy cloning machines. Shortly after maturing them to the correct age, he uses a brain washing machine to mind control all three Bruce lie to only obey his commands. At which point, he takes them into intensive training where they learn to become masters *ALMOST* as great as Bruce himself…Before they’re handed over to Colin from the FBI for their greater purpose.

See; Colins big picture plan was to create an army of Bruce Lee clones to act essentially as FBI Operatives and assassins, travelling the globe taking out dangerous targets without pushback.

And from here? the film basically turns into a bit of an anthology, where we get a story of Bruce #1 taking down gold smugglers in Hong Kong, and Bruces 2 and 3 heading to Bangkok to fight the evil Professor Neigh whos developing a super serum capable of turning men into flexible, unbreakable BRONZE! But as with all Frankenstein tales, the creatures inevitably rebel, and here? that means a final act with three pissed off Bruce Lee clones all beating each other senseless before turning inevitably on their creator.

And…when I put it as above, I think you’d come away thinking that was a fairly insane 90 minutes…its not. its a fairly insane 20 minutes with about 70 minutes of extended kind of dull fight scenes, gratuitous and TOTALLY pointless nudity, and padding. The best way to sum this one up is that, had the padding been taken out, and the fight scenes trimmed down just a little bit more. This would have been a passibly fun 70-80 minute movie. But at 90 and change…it just tips it against my favour and below average.

The film itself has a great first act that is bonkers, fairly quick to set up the premise and really does deliver on the tagline. But around the 2nd act (when the Bruces start to get missions to run) it all comes a bit unstuck for me. As mentioned the pacing goes to the wall a bit with excessive padding. The producers seemed to think that a quick way to win crowd back when things REALLY got drearey was to just shove a load of totally naked women cavorting on a beach into the film…which, just…really didnt work. and Honestly? it brings the entire 2nd act RIGHT down to a drudge, right up until Dr. Neigh begins injecting folks with the syrum that turns them into flexible ‘Bronze’ fighters…then it just gets weird and semi interesting again.

But even THAT isnt enough to fully pull the film back, and after about 10 minutes with the bronze fighters, it all hurtles back to a crawl as extended fight scenes just eat the runtime completely. Leading to a 3rd act that had scope to be an explosive finale, as the Bruces turn on each other and everyone at Professor Lawrences compound…and they spaff it right up the wall by doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with the premise. You could have had the Bruces realising they’re illegal clones of the original and turning on the creator and his compound so that it can never happen again. You could have had the implies romantic moments between Lawrences female assistant and Bruce 2 ACTUALLY lead to something. You could have even just had a hudge explosive finale with the lab getting destroyed…

But no. theres 2-3 open air fights, some running around lab corridors, a laser murder scene thats literally blink and you’ll miss it, and then an abrupt ending with half the plot lines unresolved and no real sense of closure…It was dissapointing.

Adding that it really doesnt seem to know what to do with the tone, the fact they show ACTUAL footage from Bruce Lees ACTUAL open casket funeral, the fact that the Bruce clones get NO character development whatsoever across the runtime, the dialogue being ULTRA basic and not particularly interesting and the act sturcturing being messy and lopsided…and you’re basically left with a script thats just a handful of fun/weird ideas. Stapled to the most basic of martial arts pictures.

Same goes for the direction and cine, which both are fairly flat and lifeless. This is a film that considers multi coloured ‘disco lights’ to be the height of mise en scene. Theres very few instances of good depth of field, most of the film is just locked off tripod shots in mid wide and mid close. its the most basic of sequence building with an edit thats a little rough around the edges. The bluray remaster really has done wonders to bring this film back to life and it looks really nice…But that doesnt get away from the fact its overly basic and fairly drab to me.

Performances are…surprisingly kind of dull as well, which is all the more upsetting given the calibre of the cast. With the likes of Bollo Yeung, Dragon Lee, Bruce Le and Bruce Li. You’d think this would be a star studded tribute to the master…But its yawnworthy. With most of the cast really feeling like they’re phoning it in for the most part, and a big departure from their own seperate Brucesploitation successes.

The fight scenes are ultra basic in terms of choreography, they dont mask fake contact well. Scequences go on and on and on without any kind of shake up to the formula. the fights themselves arnt particularly intricate. and theres one…maybe two at a push, instances of weapon play in this one…If done well, even simple fight sequences can look impressive. But these were SO souless, and go on for SO long…You could basically go and grab a drink and a sandwhich while they were going on and you wouldnt miss a thing.

Though, one upshot was the soundtrack which was basically almost entirely stolen from sound libraries and hit films of the 70s such as ‘Rocky’, ‘Enter the Dragon’ and ‘The Warriors’. Which was something that definitely perked me up during this. They may not be particularly well used, sound like crap and be VERY badly edited in. But its nice to hear the greats again…

Throw in some mid to poor vocal performances on the english dub and ‘The Clones of Bruce Lee’ was kind of a letdown to me honestly. Promised a lot and delivered a fraction of what it could have. I really wish it had been a more solid offering. I’ll probably revisit this one in time just to check im sure my feelings above are correct. But this was no ‘The Dragon Lives Again’ for sure…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-clones-of-bruce-lee/