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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Legendary, but estranged dad worth getting to know better
Corey and Frank Lee reunited over intense martial arts training session. (COLIN SMITH PHOTO)
Movie Review
Legend of a Warrior
- Directed by Corey Lee
- Cinematheque
- PG
- 79 minutes
- 3 1/2 stars out of five
If Legend of a Warrior was a Hollywood film, this tale of an adult son reconnecting with his kung fu master father would have been substantially different from this National Film Board documentary from Calgary filmmaker Corey Lee.
Imagine a handsome Asian actor, let's say John Cho, long estranged from his martial arts master dad (Jackie Chan) after his bitter divorce from his Caucasian mom (I'm thinking Melissa Leo) years earlier. So John Cho, now a dad with kids of his own, resolves to win the long-denied love and respect of his old man by training with him for a couple of months. Chan would be silent and even hostile at first, but during a father-and-son visit to Hong Kong, dad would finally reveal his own painful upbringing with an absentee father and a tough life.
Then they would be accosted by a gang of street toughs and in a rousing climax, father and son would kick their butts in a dazzling display of martial arts acumen and/or family unity.
Except for the last part, Corey Lee's film pretty much follows the Hollywood-style mode, with one notable deviation.
Frank Lee, the tough guy credited with bringing White Crane kung fu to Canada, is actually a decent, even gregarious guy. Indeed, he is just as eager to get to know his son as Corey is to know his dad.
That diminishment of conflict does not diminish the younger Lee's film, which is pretty compelling for its telling the elder Lee's life story.
As a young immigrant from Hong Kong, Frank Lee was working in a Chinese restaurant in Edmonton when he met Corey's mom. Forced to act as a bouncer in the establishment, Frank became legendary for his ability to pacify larger, violent patrons. (This segment of Frank's life is rendered in anime-style animation.) When he started his own kung fu school in 1966, he became a celebrated figure just as martial arts was catching on in North America.
Corey recalls how Frank began spending more time with his prize student than he spent with his own son.
So when Corey is father to his own young sons, he realizes the best way to teach them about their Chinese heritage is to reconnect with his own father, under the auspices of an intense two-month training regimen. "I don't really know the man," Corey reasons. "I only know the legend."
It's a neat idea, for no other reason than Corey and Frank regain their relationship trading punches and kicks in Frank's martial arts school, as nice a visual summation of a father-son relationship as you could ask. If it doesn't pan out like the Hollywood fantasy, that's for the very good reason that Frank Lee is, beneath the superman facade, a very real human being and one worth knowing better.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 14, 2012 D6
History
Updated on Friday, September 14, 2012 at 9:52 AM CDT: adds fact box
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