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Brandon Lee says that during his teen-age years he carried a chip on his shoulder about being the son of the legendary Bruce Lee, who made martial arts movies a worldwide phenomenon only to die in 1973 at age 33 of an adverse reaction to a prescription drug. But now, at age 27, Brandon Lee has embarked on his own film acting career. Finally, he says, he's come to terms with his father's heritage. Lee's first starring role is in "Rapid Fire," in which he plays a Chinese American art student who becomes a marked man when he witnesses a murder committed by a Mafia kingpin. The film opens today at area theaters. "Professionally speaking, being Bruce Lee's son has been a help and a hindrance," Lee said in a recent telephone interview. "It helped me get my foot in the door faster than I would have otherwise. On the other hand, it gives people a preconceived idea of who I am even before they meet me. So I have to work! harder to counteract that idea. "On a personal level, though, it's been a help. I'm very proud of my father and what he accomplished. " Lee describes his father as "a prodigiously talented martial artist. He was also a heck of an actor who came along when the martial arts genre didn't exist in the West and almost single handedly popularized it. " Although Brandon was only 81/2 when his father died, he already had spent seven years in martial arts training. "Because of that time we spent together, the martial arts have always had special meaning for me," he said. "They're a special link to my dad. It's nice. "There was a period of time when I was a teen-ager that I really didn't know how I felt about my heritage. " Lee said he drew upon his own past in creating his "Rapid Fire" character, Jake Lo. Jake's father was an American agent killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. "Jake has a lot in common with ho! w I used to be about 10 years ago," Lee said. "It has to do with the traumatic loss of his father and his not having resolved how he feels about that. I learned from experience that until you come to terms with those memories, you can't grow. He's wearing a big button which is tempting for people to push. " Lee's performance in the film is atypical in that while martial arts performers cultivate a tough-guy persona and play characters who are only too eager to fight, Jake Lo is an average individual who uses his martial arts skills only with reluctance and would be much happier leaving the heroics to someone else. "I really didn't want to do a typical character," Lee explained. "Director Dwight Little and I were eager to make a film that would surprise people, not only in terms of the martial arts choreography being special, but in that it would transcend the boundaries of this type of film. " Although he choreographed the fight scenes in "Rapid Fire," Lee is determined to avoid the label of "martial arts star. " This fall he will be filming "The Crow," a supernatural thriller about a rock musician and his fiancee who are murdered and come back from the dead bent on revenge. "It's not a horror story," Lee notes. "It's more in the vein of `Ghost' but considerably darker than that. There's some action in the script but not formal martial arts stuff. It's real important to me to do lots of types of films. I aspire to be an actor. I don't aspire to fill Dad's shoes, because nobody could. "All my life I've been getting ready for this. I went to film school, I've been involved in theater groups in Los Angeles and New York. Having Dad's name gets my foot in the door, but what I do when I'm inside the room is entirely up to me. "
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