The name draws you in because I think almost everyone has at least some interest in Kung-Fu as is portrayed in film. This documentary travels back to the beginnings of the genre's popularity in Asia and follows it as it traveled over to USA and around the world.
I enjoy Kung-fu a normal amount. I wouldn't say that i am a massive fan but what's to not appreciate about the choreography and skill that is involved in these extremely dangerous films?
The biggest star in this field is of course Bruce Lee, and the way in which the doco features his career is very informative (I learned a lot) and sadly, also quite tragic. For one thing, i didn't realize that Lee was as unappreciated as he was when he was still alive. A majority of his fame (in the west) was achieved after he was already dead, an that is a real shame.
One of the major strengths of this film is that it has clips of all the great films in China, some of which most westerners probably have never even seen since the films were, for the most part, made only for the Chinese audience. Kung-Fu films were a very niche market in the United States and for the most part would only appear in small independent theaters in big cities such as NYC.
Of course there were exceptions such as when Lee faced off against an extremely hairy Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon in 1972.
source
Was body hair sexy in 1972? It certainly isn't now :)
The other superstar they focus heavily on in Jackie Chan. Who was as far as I know, almost completely unknown in the west until 1995 when Rumble in the Bronx was released. If you haven't seen that film you really should watch it because the acting is just terrible and a lot of the dialogue, including lines by native English speakers, are poorly and bizarrely overdubbed.
It was touted as being an amazing film because Jackie Chan (who most people had never heard of) does all of his own stunts and some of them were potentially deadly.
I was unaware, for example, that during this film Chan was wearing a cast that had been painted to look like a shoe because he seriously injured his foot while filming a scene. Being the trooper that he is he took almost no time off to recover, and finished filming, and doing crazy stunts, while having limited mobility.
from the Film Is Now channel
The best aspect of this documentary is that you will likely learn quite a lot about the evolution of Kung-Fu in cinema that you wouldn't likely know otherwise. That being said, there are times when believe it or not, the presentation seems to drag a bit and I found myself getting a bit bored. I think that at nearly 2 hours in runtime, it could have been made significantly shorter without losing much appeal. Perhaps this is because I wasn't all that interested in hearing film historians present me with a dissertation. They could have moved that along a bit better or perhaps not included it at all.
Overall, this is one of the better documentaries that I have seen on Netflix in 2019 and the moments where it "drags" can be forgiven since there is so much information contained inside that an action fan is almost certainly going to end up writing down a few film names for future downloading. For example: I am embarrassed to say that I have never heard of Five Fingers of Death which is apparently legendary in Kung-Fu circles.
While i wouldn't say that this was captivating. It is certainly something you could put on while you are doing laundry or cleaning the living room. You might just learn something.
