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.
Review of Finishing the Game
