The opening film for this year’s Reel Asian film festival was Finishing the Game by Justin Lin (who also did Better Luck Tomorrow). The film is a satirical look at the making of Game of Death — marketed as Bruce Lee’s last film. Unfortunately, Lee had only left 12 minutes of film which were then converted into a movie to profit from his untimely death.

The film starts soon after Lee’s death and film producers, a young director and a casting director trying to find a stand-in for Lee in continuing the filming of Game of Death. The result is a hilarious and smart film with a great cast of Asian-American actors, including Dustin Nguyen (seen here with film producer, Julie Asato at the Opening Night Party).

The characters in this film include names like Breeze Loo, Cole Kim, Raja (a non-Asian medical student who wants to be an actor; specifically playing ninjas), Tarrick Tyler (an actor who is half Chinese – half Caucasian), and Troy Poon (an actor who refuses to be typecast, played by Dustin Nguyen). It is also amusing to see Hammer (a.k.a. MC Hammer) as a producer who works with people of “all colours.” In one scene, Hammer’s character says to an Asian actor “last time I checked yellow was a color.” This is one of many scenes with dialogue that may be “politically incorrect” to some but to me, it is a smart commentary on racial slurs and how in the 1970’s such attitudes were so prominent. One needs to only mention the Blackexploitation films as an example of these attitudes. The film also looks at the film industry and its needs to exploit anyone and anything; thus, bringing forth the notion that many aspects of this industry are governed by superficiality… One quick example, the director and casting director are trying to decide who to keep in the audition process. The decision process is narrowed down to “who would you fuck sober?”; the actors with a “fuckable factor” would then stay in the run for the role. Somehow, I think some members of the industry still have such discussions when casting a movie.

Moving on, however… Stylistically, the film has the feel of a 1970’s type documentary. There are scenes where no cameras “were allowed” and thus, all we have is audio. It worked pretty well for me. The cast is all around great; it is nice to see many familiar faces in one film. All major characters become very memorable for one way or another. The soundtrack is also pretty cool and you can check it out on iTunes. I read on the film’s official website that after this film screened at Sundance, there were “talks” of distribution. I hope you get to screen this film. It is worth the wait...