LOS ANGELES: Shannon Lee, the daughter of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, has slammed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino for portraying her father as a "caricature" in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.
Shannon said Tarantino's take on her father was no different from the way "white Hollywood" treated him when he was alive.
In an interview with The Wrap, she said the movie paints Lee, played by Mike Moh, as an "arrogant a**hole who was full of hot air", something that diminishes Lee's struggle and legacy.
"He comes across as an arrogant a**hole who was full of hot air. And not someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others," she said.
The ninth movie of Quentin Tarantino, which saw successful reception on its opening weekend in the US, blends both fiction and fact to pay tribute to the end of Hollywood's golden age.
The film features a flashback scene in which Brad Pitt’s stuntman character Cliff Booth reminisces about a run-in he had with Bruce Lee, essayed by Mike Moh of Marvel's Inhuman fame.
In a scene, Booth and Lee meet each other while the latter is shown to be screening his famous TV series The Green Hornet. The duo trade insults at first which later transforms into a brawl in which Booth gets the better of Lee. Not only does Lee come across as cocky after the fight, but the scene also undermines his martial arts capabilities in showing how a stuntman could defeat him.
Shannon, 50, said it was very "uncomfortable" for her to watch the film in a theatre as everyone was laughing at her father.
"I can understand all the reasoning behind what is portrayed in the movie. I understand that the two characters are antiheroes and this is sort of like a rage fantasy of what would happen, and they're portraying a period of time that clearly had a lot of racism and exclusion. I understand they want to make the Brad Pitt character this super bad-a** who could beat up Bruce Lee. But they didn't need to treat him in the way that white Hollywood did when he was alive."
She said, in reality, her father was often challenged but he never took them seriously.
"Here, he's the one with all the puffery and he's the one challenging Brad Pitt. Which is not how he was," she added.
She, however, praised Moh for his portrayal of Lee but criticised Tarantino's decision to direct him as a "caricature".
Lee was known for his classic martial arts movies such as Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury.
He died at the age of 32 in 1973.
(With inputs from Express News Service)