Starring: Aarif Rahman, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Christy Chung Lai-tai, MC Jin Directors: Raymond Yip Wai-man and Manfred Wong Category: IIA (Cantonese and English)
When Bruce Lee, My Brother begins, the titular character is nowhere to be seen. In fact, there's hardly anyone in the film's opening sequence.
As the title credits unfold, the Steadicam-assisted camera travels through an empty but well-appointed flat, sometimes lingering on its lush decor and ornaments. It is soon revealed to be the childhood home the young Bruce Lee shares with his parents and his four siblings until he leaves for the US as a 19-year-old in 1959.
The curtain-raiser's loving emphasis on the period details of the flat speaks volumes about what co-directors Raymond Yip Wai-man and Manfred Wong see as the film's strongest suit. However much this film is about Lee's formative years - indeed, it's supposedly based on the recollections of the martial arts star's younger brother, Robert, who provides several voiceovers in the film - Bruce Lee, My Brother is similar in spirit to Echoes of the Rainbow, with both films exploiting the audience's desire to take a collective walk down memory lane.
Lee is one of the most convenient building blocks for such identity-building - and his teenage years are regurgitated in an easily digestible form as Manfred Wong's screenplay converts Robert Lee's reminiscences into rite-of-passage melodrama embellished by a dollop of action-thriller material towards the end.
Staying loyal to Lee's life story - or at least his brother's take on it - the film follows the star's life from his birth in San Francisco through his growing pains as a rebellious teenager (complete with fights and unrequited love) and finally his (probably fictional) altercation with a local drug cartel that led to his father sending him to San Francisco.