It was the worst of times: Bruce Lee had died under very mysterious circumstances and every movie studio in the world, it seemed, was dying to cash in on it. We the faithful found ourselves lining up for each and every two-bit knockoff that promised to unveil at long last the unseen footage from THE GAME OF DEATH. Frustrating? You bet your bippy it was. As bad as the charlatans were, the final straw turned out to be the "official" release of the footage itself: GAME OF DEATH has to be one of the cheesiest movies ever made. Bad enough that they used only a portion (12 minutes) of the missing footage (as John Little would later show, there was enough footage shot to comprise at least a full third of a feature length movie); the dummy (not "double") who postured his way through the rest of the movie seemed to have stepped straight out of one of the aforementioned knockoffs. Justin Lin and company have managed to capture the feel of the early '70s and there are some downright hilarious moments in FINISHING THE GAME. The bad news is that the "actual finished film" is even funnier- in a goofy sorta way.

Mockumentary about the attempt by a film studio to finish Bruce Lee's Game of Death after Lee died leaving on 12 minutes of footage behind.Forget the real history of the Game of Death project, this film re-imagines it as having been produced by a Mickey Mouse studio who are desperate to cash in on the Bruce Lee craze. That actors would be dumb enough to think that acting as Lee's stand in would gain them fame is stretch. Worse is the bunch of losers they've assembled as candidates. An Indian doctor with an afro, a white guy, some one a foot taller than Lee and on and on, in to cliché of wrongness. The director of the new Lee film is the milquetoast son of the studio head's son. His assistant is a woman who makes her casting choices based on whether she wants to sleep with the actor. We have one actor's girlfriend who can't handle the pressure of being his girlfriend and his manager. The scenes of other films are mostly juvenile been there and done that sort. There is a good eye blink scene with Ron Jeremy and lots of topless women on a porno shoot, which strangely are the only real performances of the film. It might have worked for a five minute sketch but not for 90 minutes.I have no idea how this movie got made. I'm even more amazed that its gotten a theatrical release, and flabbergasted that IFC has picked it up. Frankly its the worst film I've seen from their releasing arm.While Time Out New York said that there are no laughs in the film I do have to say there are some, maybe five minutes of screen time, worth of jokes, including the Ron Jeremy stuff. Other than that this is just a an embarrassingly bad (and not really fun) movie that takes on a road accident quality that hypnotizes you for a few seconds before you speed off to something else since the carnage is too great.Easily one of the worst films of the year.

Just saw this movie at VC Filmfest 2007 on 05/03 Thursday night. It was a big surprise that how this movie came out.Justin Lin was born in 1973 --same year as Bruce Lee's death. When I saw this movie,it was so real that You can't believe it was made in 2007 by a director who was just born in that era.All the details were well arranged that you almost forgot it's a mocumentry instead of real footage.According to Justin Lin's answer on Q&A after the movie,this film was shot in 18 working days and under NO BUDGET....it's like WOW!--mission impossible.There were so many actors in this movie and some of them were merely recognizable,like James Franco and Brian Tee or Leonardo Nam. Other major characters shared the scenes evenly and most of them were really funny. I like Meredith Scott Lynn who play the casting director the most,she was the one audience will remember when people talked about this movie.Josh Diamond and Justin Lin wrote the script fill with funny lines and really works.it's a movie totally different from Back Luck Tomorrow or Tokyo Drift.And it proved again--Justin Lin is someone you can expect.

I just saw this up at Park City. i waited in line for two hours and i have to say it was worth it. The premise is incredibly strong and the film is filled with enough kooky characters to make Christopher Guest proud. It is a solid and smart film. I was laughing out loud consistently. the main thing i love about the film is that it deals with issues without hitting you in the face with it. ultimately it shows in an entertaining way that things haven't changed at all through time. the performances were all strong and the music rocked. the camera work was authentic and the colors just popped. overall, go see it when it comes out.