Finishing the Game (2007) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

USA 2006
Director: Justin Lin
Cast: James Franco, Roger Fan, Dustin Nguyen, Jake Sandvig, Nathan Jung, Sung Kang, Josh Diamond
Rating: Not Rated
Release Date: 21 January 2007
Running Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

The Movie Review

Finishing the Game film still 1

Oily (Bruce) Lee


FINISHING The GAME
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

Whew, Bruce Lee sure is a legend, isn't he...After all this years, his martial art prowess still inspires many people, and um.. filmmakers as well. Some of you who might wonder what's the meaning of Finishing the Game, well the Game actually refers to Bruce Lee's last unfinished film, the 1978 Game of Death. Anyhow, this movie, which in its complete title Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee, is a mockumentary (Mocking and Documentary) about the casting process to find the body-double for Bruce Lee. A body double is needed since Bruce Lee has only finished 12 minutes of the whole running length, so the rest role of Bruce Lee will be played by the best actor that could imitate Bruce Lee the most. And that's pretty much the whole storyline.

Game of Death is set in the 70s with an interviewer and his cameraman going here and there, following and interviewing the filmmakers of Game of Death and the actors about the casting process, their personal life, their agents and some other things mimicking a documentary process. Hence the subgenre name Mockumentary.

Some audiences prefer to watch a comedy movie that is stupid/silly in its core but funny, there are also who prefer the opposite of that, a comedy movie that is smart/brainy but not funny. Finishing the Game falls to the latter category. Although the jokes are not that unfunny, it's just gentle enough just like the ones you could read on newspaper. Finishing the Game using types of jokes that we used to meet in TV sitcom, and the jokes in FTG are even subtler than that. I was wondering, probably if the filmmakers had been dare to use laugh-track (like in situational comedy series), FTG would have been funnier.

The movie is actually interesting at first, but then it becomes kinda boring with no other exciting materials to be seen. There are 2 things why this movie appeals more to me. First, I've got a thing with the 70s era and I have watched Bruce Lee's Game of Death and I know the facts behind the movie. So I was thinking, if weren't a fan of Bruce Lee, would I even wanna know (read: interested) about it? The answer is No. In other words, FTG arguably will not appeal to general moviegoers.

Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee movie screenshot 2