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Our hero, Bruce Leroy, known as much for his martial artistry as his tendency to dress exclusively in Bruce Lee costumes, reaches the final stage of his training and becomes The Last Dragon, but still must learn how to channel the mystical, rotoscoped power that comes with the title – “The Glow.” So important, this glow, that it’s not only repeated in the refrain of Dwight David’s title song, but earns its own dedicated single from Motown legend Willie Hutch, aptly named “The Glow.”īut Leroy’s not the only challenger for the title – Sho’nuff, The Shogun of Harlem, is ready to kill for it.

And you don’t just forget a recommendation like that.Īfter finally buying my own copy to see for myself, I found this was not entirely true and buried the lede: Only the first few minutes of the music video get screentime, but that’s also one of the least delirious things about The Last Dragon. He told me this one featured a full, uninterrupted music video for DeBarge’s “Rhythm Of The Night” smack in the middle of it. He’s always had a more refined palate for kung-fu than I, but this was not another Shaw Brothers deep cut.

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I was trawling a video store, looking for a movie that couldn’t have been half as memorable as Dragon considering I can’t remember it, when the friend who’d joined me on this hunt found one of his minor grails. That may be a cliché, but I don’t call it into service lightly.

As a 107-minute motion picture that comes with a generous helping of Bruce Lee footage re-scored by Motown’s hottest up-and-comers, it must be seen to be believed. As an arcade game, The Last Dragon would bankrupt entire grade schools. Not exactly a David Lean script but, hey, it’s fast-paced with lots of laughs.Nothing sells me on a movie faster than a title song that just reiterates the plot in a catchy way, and they don’t come much catchier than the title song of the only movie the founder of Motown Records ever produced.īerry Gordy’s The Last Dragon (1985) opens like the attract mode of an arcade fighting game - slow-motion close-ups of muscles carved in shadow, flying kicks that treat gravity as polite suggestion, an irresistible beat and lyrics built of raw motivation - a fast, flashy case for dropping in a quarter and seeing what else this thing has in store. When Vanity refuses to show Angela’s video on TV, Eddie threatens her and Leroy comes in to save the day and win the sexy veejay’s heart.

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To further the action even more, a Danny DeVito-esque video game hoodlum named Eddie (Chris Murney) is trying to get his girlfriend Angela (played by Faith Prince as an aging Cyndi Lauper) onto Vanity’s music clip TV show. Looking like some Bootsy Collins clone accompanied by a league of Road Warrior type metal-punkers, Sho‘ Nuff challenges Leroy to a fight in the movie house, but our hero slips out the side door while the Harlem hassler beats up other filmgoers. All of a sudden, in marches “the baddest, low-down mo-fo around,” the dreaded “Shogun of Harlem” called - what else? - Sho‘ Nuff. Soon afterward, Leroy is sitting in a rowdy, uptown movie theater eating popcorn with his chopsticks and watching Enter the Dragon.

When the movie opens, a Japanese martial arts instructor (Thomas Ikeda) is concluding his lessons with strident pupil Taimak, whose character Leroy is frequently referred to as (ugh) “Bruce Lee-roy.” The student has “touched” the final level of his discipline, but to maintain the ultimate level he must find his perfect master and “feel the glow” envelop his body. A definite crowd pleaser with a good-natured if light-handed tone, the picture relies largely on sassy street jive, numerous below-the-belt jabs, and old-fashioned slapstick to provide the laughs. While Dragon plainly owes a large debt to both Karate Kid and Purple Rain, this Tri-Star-distributed production settles for a mindless plot filled with low-brow humor rather than attempting any sort of ponderous message-mongering.