Game of Death II

For a significant chunk of its running time Game of Death II is farcical, a bankrupt attempt to get another Bruce Lee film onto the marketplace despite the fact that the star had been dead for nearly eight years. Death II uses odds and ends from a variety of incompatible sources in its efforts to gin up any sort of story. The film's dubious nature is compounded for this English-dubbed international release; the producers dredging up every single scrap of Lee that their American audience hadn't already seen. As well as treating us to yet another glimpse of the late actor's funeral, Ng See-yuen's film cobbles together a plot premised on distant stand-ins and scenes deleted from the American theatrical release of Enter the Dragon.

We're even subjected to some scratchy black and white clips lifted from Xi lu xiang, a film Lee worked on as a child, here used to describe a wayward adolescence. Helpfully, captions pop up onscreen indicating Bruce's age at the time the footage was shot - a documentary note intruding on a narrative feature - just in case you were in danger of suspending your disbelief. The most entertaining element of Death II's off-cut opening comes courtesy of director Sammo Hung, a snappy greenhouse fight between Casanova Wong and Kim Tai-chung that was incorporated into the Hong Kong release of the original Game of Death. Kim plays the Lee stand-in character, Billy Lo, throughout this sequence, dodging Wong's powerful but clumsy kicks. The actor returns later in this sequel, graduating to a leading role as Billy's younger brother Bobby.

Game of Death II's first half then is a shuffling mutant, Lee's absence keenly felt in scenes where his character roughs around Tokyo nightclubs, shaking down nervy singers for leads. These scenes are barely functional, never mind credible, but they do suggest a grittier, fluorescent direction otherwise denied to Lee - the promise of the superstar in his very own Get Carter feels particularly potent. An hour in, the film switches up several gears with the promotion of Kim. His Bobby Lo, a fair approximation of Lee's laconic magnetism, packs himself off to a sprawling lair for a series of incomprehensible intrigues. As a finale, this section throbs along beautifully. Bobby surmounting barely articulated betrayals, kung-fu assassins disguised as lions, and even an electrified floor that reduces careless henchmen to ash.