Movie Review: Bruce Lee is Well Remembered in Remarkable 'Be Water'

Imagine being incredible. Think of what it might be like to believe and be able to prove in many ways that you are exceptional. For some of us that will all we'll ever have is an imagining of our own greatness. For Bruce Lee, greatness was evident, it was provable and undeniable. And yet, despite his greatness being obvious to anyone who witnessed him, he was still denied what he should have been assured, worldwide stardom on a scale similar to or exceeding any Hollywood star in history.

Don’t be mistaken, Bruce Lee eventually achieved a form of immortality via fame and his tragic early death, but it should have been handed to him while he was alive to experience it. Instead, he was repeatedly denied the opportunity to demonstrate his greatness, held back by the ingrained racism of a Hollywood system that never ended but merely morphed into a more corporate style of racism.

The new documentary Be Water is the thesis statement of my previous two paragraphs. The ESPN produced 30 for 30 documentary from filmmaker Bao Nguyen, tells the story of Bruce Lee’s life via his varying entreaties into that Hollywood system, his almost constant frustration when working within that system and expecting his due rewards, and finally the success in Hong Kong that proved what the Hollywood system denied for so long only to try to grab on to when it was too late.

Be Water begins with remarkably well preserved footage of a Bruce Lee screen test for his eventual role in The Green Hornet. Lee’s magnetism, his supernatural level of charisma and charm is evident even as the producers appear only interested in him performing martial arts moves. Lee obliges their desire to watch him perform, except that his movements are so lightning quick they can barely be captured on film. An older gentleman is drafted into the scene just to slow Bruce’s moves down by having an object in front of him that he doesn’t want to harm.

The documentary is narrated by stories from Bruce Lee’s wife, Linda Lee Cadwell, his daughter, Shannon Lee, and many of Lee’s friends including basketball legend, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Letters from Lee to friends are read by Shannon and they are touching and revealing portraits of the private Bruce Lee, one that was nuanced and thoughtful, a great deal more than the quiet warrior pop culture conflated from his movies.

Racism looms large in Be Water and you can’t help but ache at seeing the horrendously racist images that account for Hollywood’s portrayals of Asian American, Japanese, Chinese and Korean performers. Linda Lee recalls the story of being horrified when she and Bruce went to see Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Bruce’s righteous disgust over Mickey Rooney’s sickening caricature of Asian people in one of the most popular films of the time, one that somehow is still remembered to this day when it should be binned off for good.

The other standout aspect of Be Water is philosophy, specifically Bruce’s own philosophy regarding martial arts. Lee famously invented his type of martial art, Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid of a number of disciplines Lee mastered over the years, unified by his philosophical thought on the necessity of martial arts and their meaning. The title of the documentary comes from Lee’s belief that a martial artist should strive to be like water, an inexorable, inexhaustible force of nature that can adapt and overcome anything.

The documentary culminates with Lee’s Hong Hong triumphs, the four films that are his and my proof of concept of Lee’s star power. The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon and the posthumous release, Enter the Dragon, were such worldwide phenomena that their gross adjusted to today would place Lee as the biggest single box office star on the planet. The great 'what if' of what might have been if Hollywood racism hadn’t tripped up Lee at every step of his original foray into film and television, is one of the great what if scenarios in pop culture history.

Bruce Lee had once in a generation charisma, it emanated from him any time he appeared on television and found its most lasting legacy in film. Few more natural performers have ever existed than Bruce Lee. Be Water does well to burnish that legacy, to give it room to breathe and become real for generations who never got to see Lee while he was alive and now will never forget him in death.

Be Water debuts Sunday, June 7th, on ESPN.