It's perhaps not surprising a biopic is being released for the occasion. Saturday marks what would have been the 70th birthday of the world's best known Hongkonger - Bruce Lee. The focus of this new production, however, is on the adolescent Bruce.
Bruce Lee, My Brother, a star-studded production from Media Asia, is based on the recollections of Lee's younger brother, Robert. Directed by Raymond Yip Wai-man and Manfred Wong, the HK$36 million movie traces the early years, from his birth in San Francisco to growing up in Hong Kong as a street punk, champion cha-cha dancer and actor, and ends with his departure to the US in April, 1959. Tony Leung Kar-fai plays his father, the Cantonese opera virtuoso Lee Hoi-chuen, and Christy Chung Lai-tai his mother Grace Ho, a descendant of the Hotung clan.
My Brother might be seen as part of a surge of interest in the early life of martial arts icons; Herman Yau Lai-to's The Legend is Born: Ip Man, about the formative years of the Wing Chun master, is a good example. But there's another compelling reason biopics such as My Brother conclude when the young Bruce is about to leave for the US: the rights to Lee's life story.
All films made about Lee these days require approval from Lee's estate or his siblings, says Brian Chung Wai-hung, chief executive of the Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories Motion Picture Industry Association.
The actor's siblings control the rights to his story before 1959 (when Lee headed to San Francisco), while the Bruce Lee estate, headed by his widow Linda Lee Cadwell and daughter Shannon, has a say over any depiction of Lee after he attained success in Hollywood in the 1960s.
In My Brother, Lee (played by Echoes of the Rainbow star Aarif Lee) is depicted as an upstanding youngster who goes up against racist colonialists and drug-peddling gangsters, and a shy romantic suffering unrequited love.
