Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee (2007, USA)

It’s my hope that Justin Lin will continue making work like Finishing the Game and Better Luck Tomorrow in between various episodes of the Fast and Furious franchise. He’s one of the only directors in Hollywood who deals explicitly with Asian-American characters and identity issues while simultaneously creating interesting work for young actors of Asian heritage. With Finishing the Game, Lin takes the premature death of Bruce Lee as his launching board for a satirical look at how Asians are portrayed in popular film and television, while at the same time affectionately parodying 70’s kung-fu cinema. It’s a slight film (clocking in at well under an hour and a half), and not quite as funny as it could be, but still – I can’t imagine another director who would tackle this material at all, much less straight on and with a fair deal of humor. It’s obviously a labor of love for Lin, his co-writer, Josh Diamond (who also plays the interviewer in the film’s faux-doc set-up), and their cast, which includes such Lin regulars as Sung Kang and Roger Fan (look fast for a James Franco cameo and listen close for George Takai). It may not pay off in full, but it’s certainly fresh.