Death By Misadventure: The Mysterious Life of Bruce Lee (1993)

Bruce Lee’s life and career has been documented so often in every medium that producing anything new that fans haven’t already heard before becomes a challenge. In addition, Bruce Lee’s premature death and the mostly unfounded controversy that followed, along with dozens of exploitative docudramas and films starring Bruce Lee look-alikes has led Lee’s legacy to be tarnished by a lot of speculation and outright falsehoods. Death by Misadventure dives right into the controversies, particularly by discussing Lee’s death, officially diagnosed by doctors as “death by misadventure,” which was supposedly to sidetrack issues pertaining to Lee’s cannabis use and his life insurance policy’s drug-related restrictions.

The filmmakers are thorough enough to cover most of Lee’s life. They uncover rarely seen footage from many of the Hong Kong films he starred in as a child. Linda Lee Cadwell is not interviewed or involved in the production, nor are many of Lee’s leading co-stars and Hollywood pals. But interviews are scored with some of Lee’s Jeet Kune Do students who discuss among other things, a challenge by several martial artists that Lee overcame in Seattle. Very rare and welcome interviews are snagged with karate champion, martial arts star, and Jeet Kune Do student Ron Van Clief, as well as one-time Bruce Lee imitation actor Ho Chung-tao (AKA Bruce Li), Game of Death co-star George Lazenby, and a kung fu instructor who taught Lee during his high school days.

The film glosses over Lee’s early Hollywood experiences and failure to earn a starring role in Kung Fu the series. It does go into some detail concerning Lee’s return to Hong Kong film, his early success, and what led him there. But clearly, the film’s focus is on his death. Interviews with two doctors who had worked on Lee when he was first admitted to the hospital shortly before his death go on and on in more detail than necessary. Further slowing the pace and marring the credibility of the documentary is the continual inclusion of footage from two different Bruceploitation films including Bruce Lee: A Dragon Story (1974) starring Ho Chung-tao that are labeled as dramatizations of events in Lee’s life. It doesn’t take a genius to note that these films are highly fictional accounts and should not be used as source material for a biopic, except to illustrate the bastardization of Lee’s image, which is also covered with clips from even more exploitive films like Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave.

Death by Misadventure’s value to Bruce Lee fans hoping to learn more about the man lies mostly in the film’s exclusive interviews. The filmmakers emphasize this by building unenlightening narration, low quality film footage, and useless clips from Bruceploitation films around them. To be fair the documentary, which does not have the savvy or financing of an A&E production still handles its material with a fair degree of professionalism, detail, and impartiality. The interviews are not always of the highest quality, mostly due to poor audio recording, but a lack of heavy editing and the generally interesting comments made by the interviewees is refreshing and insightful.

Further highlights include an interview with Lee’s son Brandon just as he was beginning to shoot The Crow, along with clips from some of his previous films. And although it didn’t make it in the film itself, a bonus interview with legendary Hong Kong stuntman and actor Phillip Ko Fei is possibly the greatest gem to be found in the DVD release. Unbeknownst to me until now, he was among the many future Hong Kong kung fu stars brought in by Lee as stuntmen to film Enter the Dragon. Through an interpreter, Phillip enthusiastically demonstrates how Lee got back at his co-star Robert Wall after he was accidentally cut with a bottle. Phillip’s comparisons between Lee and stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li who ended up succeeding him in international fame accurately summarizes the intense respect most kung fu stuntmen have for Lee and the unfortunate decline of martial arts realism in film that exists today. This unlikely epitaph would have been a great way to end this documentary and honor the Dragon as history’s greatest martial arts actor, but of course he was so much more.