"Boogie", directed by Eddie Huang, is not a rags to riches story. The filmmaker doesn't posit Zhi Xiang Chin(Taylor Takahashi) as David, when he takes on Monk(Bashar Jackson), the top-rated basketball player in NYC. This is not the 20th century; this is not Rocky Balboa(Sylvester Stallone), a decided underdog, in John G. Avildsen's "Rocky", when he challenges Apollo Creed(Carl Weathers) for the world heavyweight championship. Set in Queens, circa now, the idea of an Asian-American basketball player is not an implausible one as it would have been in the seventies: Lamont Johnson's "One on One", Jack Smight's "Fastbreak", Gilbert Moses' "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh" were all released around the same time, the latter two comedies. Not a single Asian-American in sight; not even a bench-warmer or team manager. Quite pointedly, at the outset of "Boogie", the filmmaker utilizes a long-standing Far East trope: The Magical Asian who can tell your fortune in Chinatown. Boogie's parents ask the fortune teller(Jessica Huang) about their marriage prospects; their compatibility, while the future basketball star incubates in his mother's womb. The fortune teller doesn't have a mogwai for sale, but then again, nobody asks her. This conversation takes place in 2001. That fateful day in September is never dramatized or spoken about. "Boogie" is not that type of movie. 2001 is significant, because the following year, Yao Ming broke into the NBA and became a global star as the starting center for the Houston Rockets. Zhi Xiang grew up with a role model that Americans from all walks of life could relate to. Generation Z, arguably, represents the first era of Chinese-Americans who didn't have to grow up in the shadow of Bruce Lee.
Don't get me wrong. The star of "Fists of Fury" and "Enter the Dragon" was a paragon of cool. But wanting to be Bruce Lee wasn't. "The Last Dragon", directed by Michael Schultz, inadvertently makes this clear. The three Chinese males who work at a fortune cookie company are utilized as comic relief. But for an Asian-American spectator who reads against the grain, he can appreciate that they're not practicing the latest Kung Fu moves outside the factory on their break. They dance; they talk, coopting hip-hop moves and its correlative idiom, jive, specific to African-American culture, in an attempt to distance themselves from their inherent otherness. When Leroy Green(Taimuk) shows up in a classic Wing Chun jacket and conical hat, Johnny Wu(Glenn Eaton), the ringleader, and his pals are confronted with the stereotype they spent half their lives running away from. Leroy's "sifu"(Thomas Ikeda) sent his pupil on a mission to find the "master", who can teach him about "the glow". These working stiffs, unlike the martial arts teacher, have no intention of playing a role in the Bruce Lee movie that unspools in Leroy's head. The master, as it turns out, is a machine that spits out pseudo-profound gibberish on thin, white-stripped paper that passes as wisdom found in the heart of the cookie. The sifu, despite his appearance of being benign, doesn't suffer fools gladly either. He knowingly sent Leroy on a wild goose chase. He too, perhaps, can't tolerate being treated less like a person than an exotic. Chinese-Americans needed a domestic hero, somebody other than a man, worshipped as a minor deity, from across the Pacific who could immobilize all-comers with nunchucks and break wooden boards with punches or kicks. In real life, nobody's hands were lethal weapons.
Michael Chang was Rocky Balboa. At seventeen, the American-born Chang from Hoboken, New Jersey upset Ivan Lendl in the 1989 French Open semifinals. Mr. Chin(Perry Yung), Boogie's father, tells his son: "This was the greatest moment in Chinese-American history." Boogie is too young; he doesn't get it, as they watch an old VHS-recording of the history-making tennis match. That's because Boogie didn't have to grow up with the playground bullying that earlier generations of Chinese boys dealt with because of films like "The Last Dragon", and especially, "The Karate Kid". Without spelling it out explicitly, the father calls his son privileged, reprimanding him gently for not showing the proper respect for what Michael Chang's success meant to the community. Tennis, back in the father's day, was still a predominantly achromatic sport. It didn't have the street cred that basketball enjoys. Mr. Chin was a little kid, probably about nine-to-twelve when Chang defeated Stefan Edberg in the finals to claim the French Open title. It was something to brag about when he heard the taunts of his peers on the basketball court. Tennis wasn't enough to offset the specter of Kung Fu. Practicing with his son under moonlight, Mr. Chin holds up a martial arts blocking pad, a vestige of his past Bruce Lee worship, as both protection and provocation tool when Boogie makes his drives toward the basket. Out of the blue, he utters an anachronism, given the time and place; he tells Zhi Xiang that "the idea of a Chinese basketball player is a joke," which is patently false, given the success of the aforementioned Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin. Despite Boogie's success and a father's pride that goes along with it, the misnomer belies sore feelings that persist inside Mr. Chin's medulla oblongata about never getting a fair shake with coaches and players who categorically dismissed him as their athletic equal. The father, by all appearances, taught his son all the fundamentals required to play D1 ball; the proverbial chip off the old block, who must remain content with the consolation prize of living vicariously through his talented son. Not coincidentally, Boogie's team has a second Chinese player on its roster. Arthur(Ming Wu), a scrub from last year's three-win team. After Zhi Xiang describes his teammates as "hot trash" to the coach, word gets back to Mrs. Chin(Pamelyn Chee), Boogie's mother, who agrees with her son's assessment. The husband gets it; he understands that his wife is calling him "hot trash" through circuitous means. Arthur is Mr. Chin's stand-in, a benchwarmer, "picked last". The idea of a Chinese basketball player, even as recently as the eighties, when Boogie's father was coming-of-age, would have been laughed at, still. Bruce Lee's popularity hadn't run its course yet. Midnight showings of "Enter the Dragon" was still an attraction in the grindhouses of New York City, inspiring characters like Sho'nuff(Julius Carry) in "The Last Dragon", to get on stage and anoint himself "The Shogun of Harlem". Out in the real world, however, being Bruce Lee had no real cultural currency.
Boogie code-switches. At home, he's Zhi Xiang, fluent in Mandarin, honors his ancestors, and obeys tradition from back in the old country. At dinner, being the youngest, he takes over the duty of tea pouring from his Uncle Jackie(Eddie Huang), without ego, like any earnest son would. At home, he's Rocky-like. "The Italian Stallion" would start the morning by downing five raw eggs before his 4AM run. The raw egg makes a purposeful cameo in "Boogie". Mrs. Chin serves hot noodles. The egg is used to cool the broth. But at school and on the hardwood, he's Apollo Creed; a world-beater. As Boogie, his "stripper name", Zhi Xiang speaks English with an African-American inflection that's as natural as his Mandarin. He wouldn't be caught dead hanging around Arthur. The filmmaker, just like Justin Lin("Better Luck Tomorrow") before him, is out to kill the stereotype of the model minority. By design, his creation disorientates an audience unused to seeing somebody who looks like Zhi Xiang act like any other jock, being crude with the ladies, when he uses a vulgar pick-up line on Eleanor(Taylour Paige) at the gym. He's obnoxious. That's the point. "Don't tell me..." Eleanor confers with Alissa(Alexa Mareka), her best friend. He is. That's new. Whereas in "The Way of the Dragon", directed by the legend himself, Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) lacks the emotional wherewithal to react when an Italian beauty(Malisa Longo) comes on to him in a Rome hotel suite, and similarly, Leroy Green, like Bruce(who is something of a performative eunuch in his brief oeuvre), uses martial arts to overcompensate for his shyness around Laura Charles(Vanity), Boogie can walk and chew gum at the same. In other words, he can score on and off the court.
"Ever since you were a boy, you've dreamt of being Kung Fu guy," Charles Yu writes, from his 2020 NBA-award winning novel "Interior Chinatown" which follows the acting career of Willis Wu, whose resume includes the ability to play the "disgraced son", "caught between two worlds", and "striving immigrant". Taylor Takahashi, a former California prep star, at various junctures in "Boogie", slips in and out of these historical filmic stereotypes, but Takahashi never plays "generic Asian man". Boogie is the alpha male; the best athlete at a NYC prep school. "Everyone on that team wishes they could be you," Richie(Jorge Lendebourg Jr.), Zhi Xiang's best friend, tells the star player. It's no accident that the school's nickname is the Dragons. In "The Last Dragon", Richie Green(Leo O'Brien), Leroy's younger brother, doesn't want people to know that he's related to a nerd. Purposefully, the filmmaker recycles the name Richie. Of Dominican descent, Boogie's Richie extols his admiration for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", whose titular character is an outcast like Leroy, a comic book and science fiction geek. The author, Junot Diaz, is on record as being a Bruce Lee fan. Being around Zhi Xiang makes Richie feel cool. The filmmaker is, more than likely, aware of the juxtaposition between both Richies.
Monk, ironically, comes across as the biggest geek, when he calls Zhi Xiang "little ninja". It's quite possible that Boogie never watched a Bruce Lee film. Why would he? It's been nearly fifty years since Bruce Lee's tragic, unexpected demise at the age of thirty-two.
It's ancient Chinese history.
Don't get me wrong. The star of "Fists of Fury" and "Enter the Dragon" was a paragon of cool. But wanting to be Bruce Lee wasn't. "The Last Dragon", directed by Michael Schultz, inadvertently makes this clear. The three Chinese males who work at a fortune cookie company are utilized as comic relief. But for an Asian-American spectator who reads against the grain, he can appreciate that they're not practicing the latest Kung Fu moves outside the factory on their break. They dance; they talk, coopting hip-hop moves and its correlative idiom, jive, specific to African-American culture, in an attempt to distance themselves from their inherent otherness. When Leroy Green(Taimuk) shows up in a classic Wing Chun jacket and conical hat, Johnny Wu(Glenn Eaton), the ringleader, and his pals are confronted with the stereotype they spent half their lives running away from. Leroy's "sifu"(Thomas Ikeda) sent his pupil on a mission to find the "master", who can teach him about "the glow". These working stiffs, unlike the martial arts teacher, have no intention of playing a role in the Bruce Lee movie that unspools in Leroy's head. The master, as it turns out, is a machine that spits out pseudo-profound gibberish on thin, white-stripped paper that passes as wisdom found in the heart of the cookie. The sifu, despite his appearance of being benign, doesn't suffer fools gladly either. He knowingly sent Leroy on a wild goose chase. He too, perhaps, can't tolerate being treated less like a person than an exotic. Chinese-Americans needed a domestic hero, somebody other than a man, worshipped as a minor deity, from across the Pacific who could immobilize all-comers with nunchucks and break wooden boards with punches or kicks. In real life, nobody's hands were lethal weapons.
Michael Chang was Rocky Balboa. At seventeen, the American-born Chang from Hoboken, New Jersey upset Ivan Lendl in the 1989 French Open semifinals. Mr. Chin(Perry Yung), Boogie's father, tells his son: "This was the greatest moment in Chinese-American history." Boogie is too young; he doesn't get it, as they watch an old VHS-recording of the history-making tennis match. That's because Boogie didn't have to grow up with the playground bullying that earlier generations of Chinese boys dealt with because of films like "The Last Dragon", and especially, "The Karate Kid". Without spelling it out explicitly, the father calls his son privileged, reprimanding him gently for not showing the proper respect for what Michael Chang's success meant to the community. Tennis, back in the father's day, was still a predominantly achromatic sport. It didn't have the street cred that basketball enjoys. Mr. Chin was a little kid, probably about nine-to-twelve when Chang defeated Stefan Edberg in the finals to claim the French Open title. It was something to brag about when he heard the taunts of his peers on the basketball court. Tennis wasn't enough to offset the specter of Kung Fu. Practicing with his son under moonlight, Mr. Chin holds up a martial arts blocking pad, a vestige of his past Bruce Lee worship, as both protection and provocation tool when Boogie makes his drives toward the basket. Out of the blue, he utters an anachronism, given the time and place; he tells Zhi Xiang that "the idea of a Chinese basketball player is a joke," which is patently false, given the success of the aforementioned Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin. Despite Boogie's success and a father's pride that goes along with it, the misnomer belies sore feelings that persist inside Mr. Chin's medulla oblongata about never getting a fair shake with coaches and players who categorically dismissed him as their athletic equal. The father, by all appearances, taught his son all the fundamentals required to play D1 ball; the proverbial chip off the old block, who must remain content with the consolation prize of living vicariously through his talented son. Not coincidentally, Boogie's team has a second Chinese player on its roster. Arthur(Ming Wu), a scrub from last year's three-win team. After Zhi Xiang describes his teammates as "hot trash" to the coach, word gets back to Mrs. Chin(Pamelyn Chee), Boogie's mother, who agrees with her son's assessment. The husband gets it; he understands that his wife is calling him "hot trash" through circuitous means. Arthur is Mr. Chin's stand-in, a benchwarmer, "picked last". The idea of a Chinese basketball player, even as recently as the eighties, when Boogie's father was coming-of-age, would have been laughed at, still. Bruce Lee's popularity hadn't run its course yet. Midnight showings of "Enter the Dragon" was still an attraction in the grindhouses of New York City, inspiring characters like Sho'nuff(Julius Carry) in "The Last Dragon", to get on stage and anoint himself "The Shogun of Harlem". Out in the real world, however, being Bruce Lee had no real cultural currency.
Boogie code-switches. At home, he's Zhi Xiang, fluent in Mandarin, honors his ancestors, and obeys tradition from back in the old country. At dinner, being the youngest, he takes over the duty of tea pouring from his Uncle Jackie(Eddie Huang), without ego, like any earnest son would. At home, he's Rocky-like. "The Italian Stallion" would start the morning by downing five raw eggs before his 4AM run. The raw egg makes a purposeful cameo in "Boogie". Mrs. Chin serves hot noodles. The egg is used to cool the broth. But at school and on the hardwood, he's Apollo Creed; a world-beater. As Boogie, his "stripper name", Zhi Xiang speaks English with an African-American inflection that's as natural as his Mandarin. He wouldn't be caught dead hanging around Arthur. The filmmaker, just like Justin Lin("Better Luck Tomorrow") before him, is out to kill the stereotype of the model minority. By design, his creation disorientates an audience unused to seeing somebody who looks like Zhi Xiang act like any other jock, being crude with the ladies, when he uses a vulgar pick-up line on Eleanor(Taylour Paige) at the gym. He's obnoxious. That's the point. "Don't tell me..." Eleanor confers with Alissa(Alexa Mareka), her best friend. He is. That's new. Whereas in "The Way of the Dragon", directed by the legend himself, Tang Lung(Bruce Lee) lacks the emotional wherewithal to react when an Italian beauty(Malisa Longo) comes on to him in a Rome hotel suite, and similarly, Leroy Green, like Bruce(who is something of a performative eunuch in his brief oeuvre), uses martial arts to overcompensate for his shyness around Laura Charles(Vanity), Boogie can walk and chew gum at the same. In other words, he can score on and off the court.
"Ever since you were a boy, you've dreamt of being Kung Fu guy," Charles Yu writes, from his 2020 NBA-award winning novel "Interior Chinatown" which follows the acting career of Willis Wu, whose resume includes the ability to play the "disgraced son", "caught between two worlds", and "striving immigrant". Taylor Takahashi, a former California prep star, at various junctures in "Boogie", slips in and out of these historical filmic stereotypes, but Takahashi never plays "generic Asian man". Boogie is the alpha male; the best athlete at a NYC prep school. "Everyone on that team wishes they could be you," Richie(Jorge Lendebourg Jr.), Zhi Xiang's best friend, tells the star player. It's no accident that the school's nickname is the Dragons. In "The Last Dragon", Richie Green(Leo O'Brien), Leroy's younger brother, doesn't want people to know that he's related to a nerd. Purposefully, the filmmaker recycles the name Richie. Of Dominican descent, Boogie's Richie extols his admiration for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", whose titular character is an outcast like Leroy, a comic book and science fiction geek. The author, Junot Diaz, is on record as being a Bruce Lee fan. Being around Zhi Xiang makes Richie feel cool. The filmmaker is, more than likely, aware of the juxtaposition between both Richies.
Monk, ironically, comes across as the biggest geek, when he calls Zhi Xiang "little ninja". It's quite possible that Boogie never watched a Bruce Lee film. Why would he? It's been nearly fifty years since Bruce Lee's tragic, unexpected demise at the age of thirty-two.
It's ancient Chinese history.