Legacy of Rage (1986)

Brandon plays Brandon Ma, a regular working Joe who holds down two jobs, so he can support his girlfriend May and his dream of owning a motorcycle. Brandon's best friend is Michael (played ... See full summary »

Director:

Ronny Yu

Writers:

Raymond Fung, Clifton Ko

Stars:

Brandon Lee, Michael Wong, Regina Kent

1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Brandon Lee	...	Brandon Ma
Michael Wong	...	Michael
Regina Kent	...	May
Michael Wai-Man Chan	...	Yee (as Wai-Man Chan)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Onno Boelee	...	Caucasian prisonner 'Big Papa'
Hak Chu	...	Mr. Wong
Tau Chu	...	Michael's Thug
Raymond Sai-Hung Fung	...	Drug Buyer's Driver
Tanya George
Kwok Wing Ha	...	Michael's Thug
Shang He	...	Muscle Thug's Man (as Woh Seung)
Hsin Nan Hung	...	Muscle Thug's Man
Chui Kin-Wa	...	Prisoner
Blackie Shou Liang Ko	...	Michael's Thug (as Blacky Ko Sau-Leung)
Clifton Ko	...	Hotel Manager (as Clifton Ko Chi-Sum)

Storyline

Brandon plays Brandon Ma, a regular working Joe who holds down two jobs, so he can support his girlfriend May and his dream of owning a motorcycle. Brandon's best friend is Michael (played by Michael Wong), an ambitious and murderous dope peddler. How Brandon and Michael ever became friends is the biggest mystery in the film. In any case, Michael covets May and so he comes up with a plan that will win her for him, and solves a problem he's been having. It seems that an undercover cop named Sharky has been using his police connections to dominate the local cocaine trade, so Michael has him killed and uses Brandon as the fall guy. Brandon goes to jail, though he thinks that he will be released soon thanks to the efforts of his good buddy Michael. Eight years later Brandon finally gets out of jail.

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Plot Keywords:

cocaine | carnage | exit wound | fight | death | 

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Taglines:

Like father, like son...

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Genres:

Action

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence, some language and brief drug use

Details

Country:

Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese

Release Date:

20 December 1986 (Hong Kong)

Also Known As:

Legacy of Rage

Company Credits

Production Co:

D & B Films Co. Ltd., Daiei Eiga

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The hand-to-hand fight sequences contain elements of Jeet Kune Do: The Way Of The Intercepting Fist, which was created by Brandon Lee's father Bruce Lee as well as traditional Gun-Fu style sequences akin to John Woo's films.

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Connections

Referenced in E! True Hollywood Story: Brandon Lee (1997)

User Reviews

Pretty good action, predictable crime drama plot.

Brandon Lee was offered the lead in this rather routine actioner and was apparently reluctant to accept, not knowing how well he would be received as a successor to his now-legendary father. The response was a positive one. Brandon showed himself to be a good actor, as did co-star Michael Fitzgerald Wong in an early role as a smooth baddie, and Brandon also showed off some impressive martial arts chops. The fight scenes are the main reason to watch this movie at this point. The double-crossed- by-my-best-friend-now-I-have-to-get-revenge plot line has been done to death by now and it was not exactly fresh stuff at the time (1986). This one, like Rapid Fire, shows off Brandon as an 80s action hero who could fight, do stunts and act too. He was evolving into an international action star and had he survived the accident on the set of The Crow, that one role would have made him an A-lister. Brandon Lee made so few movies by the time of his death that every one is a curiosity, although The Crow is the only one that is actually really good. Oh, what might have been.

Be warned that most of the dialogue is in Cantonese, which neither the California raised Brandon nor New York City native Michael could speak. If you read their lips, they were actually speaking English and post- synched into Cantonese by actors who sounded nothing like them. Of course, when a scene requires them to actually speak English, instead of using their own voices, the editors dubbed in English dialogue using yet another actor who had a thick accent and sounded even less like them! You would think the producers would take advantage of having English speaking actors around to dub their own English dialogue, but it is instructive of the high-speed factory approach to film making common in Hong Kong at the time that this was not done. Production units and editors had little contact with one another, and in any case one or the other used whatever talent was on hand at the time rather than looking for opportunities to refine the finished product.