[.ca] Year Of The Dragon

From Amazon.com:
Redemption for director Michael Cimino and burgeoning stardom for actor Mickey Rourke were on the agenda when Year of the Dragon was released in 1985, and even if those things didn't quite come to pass, the result was nevertheless an entertaining, at times even compelling film. Cimino, seven years removed from his Oscar triumph The Deer Hunter and five years past the debacle that was (and still is) Heaven's Gate, made a move back into the mainstream with this violent tale about New York's Chinatown, where gangs and heroin-dealing Chinese "triads" hold sway--at least until police captain Stanley White comes on the scene, fiercely determined to put the bad guys out of business. As portrayed by Rourke, White is arrogant, boorish, and bullheaded, a thoughtless jerk who puts anyone who cares about him in mortal danger, all of which we're supposed to forgive because he served in Vietnam and is so righteously intent on doing his job. Problem is, White is almost completely unlikable, rendering his relationships with his long-suffering wife (Caroline Kava) and his TV reporter girlfriend (a wooden Ariane) implausible in the extreme. Add to that a script (by Cimino and Oliver Stone) filled with stilted, macho dialogue and a level of facile racism and sexism that would be unacceptable by new millennium standards, and you've got a tough sell. Still, Cimino knows how to direct the action sequences, and he's able to sustain a good level of tension as the story builds toward its inevitable confrontation between White and young crime lord Joey Tai (John Lone, channeling Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part II). And the aftermath? Cimino made only four movies in the ensuing twenty years, none of them exactly blockbusters, while Rourke sank into a self-inflicted oblivion from which he has yet to recover. Not exactly the hoped-for outcome, but neither of them should be ashamed to have Year of the Dragon on his resume. --Sam Graham

Should be called YEAR OF THE DODO:
Oh no. A Mickey Rourke movie. Lock up your daughters and bar the windows, this isn't going to be pretty. YEAR OF THE DRAGON is a major career stretch for the Mickster- this time around his character doesn't use "MF" to punctuate his sentences. In a highly original, high concept plot that would have done the late Don Simpson proud; Mickaroo plays Stanley White, an ex-Nam vet who is now a cop fighting corruption in Chinatown, and his task is to track down and arrest and/or wipe out street gangs, but he soon finds himself up against drug dealers, but that's no problem for Mick seeing as he is your everyday suburban Rambo. Rourke's attempts at intelligent social commentary are enough to drive any viewer to burn the VHS tape. YEAR OF THE DODO is directed by Michael "The Deer Hunter" Cimino who should have known better than to subject viewers to this "unpleasant movie." There's some gore, but mostly bore. And it's overlong to boot. Check out Ridley Scott's BLACK RAIN instead, it's not hugely memorable but its far better than this.

Politically Incorrect....But Engrossing:
This story, of a gruff, dysfunctional, but brilliant detective out to bring down the Triads is a fast paced & very entertaining action film, meant to capitialize on the Chinatown shoot-outs at The Golden Dragon restaurants, that had captured the attention of the news media back in the late 1970's. That said, the characters, especially Mickey Rourke's lead, are somewhat pedestrian & conventional. (Do ALL brilliant book & movie detectives have to have screwed up personal lives?!) Besides that, I wondered about why a POLISH-American cop would be so personally obsessed about taking out the CHINESE mafia? I'm NOT into political correctness. (Though I'm Chinese by descent, I wasn't so gung-ho about all of the protesting from the Asian activists about this movie back in the '80's. After all, there are more important things to worry about than an action flick!) But I am into BELIEVABLE films. One reviewer who liked this movie said that director Cimino "kept it real." If it was "real", the lead (both in the book & in the movie) would have been someone with a very personal stake in bringing down the Triads. That would have justified his obsession AT THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY. (It's one thing to have him see it as just a job at the beginning, then have him obsessed AFTER they attack his friends & family. But this guy is so gung-ho RIGHT AT THE START!) Politically correct or not....he should have been a Chinese, and not a Polish cop. (That goes for the book, as well as the movie!) That said, the leading lady, a Chinese-American reporter, is the opposite....she's just too politically correct (in her mouthings about rights & such, not in her depiction) to be believable. (She might be a good actress, but I found her character annoying. It wasn't her fault. I blame the writers!) Worst of all was John Lone's character. He's also a good actor, but in the story, he's absolutely no match, mentally or (especially) physically for Rourke's character. A villain should be the equal of the hero, in order to create audience tension (even though you know the good guy is supposed to win in the end.) But Rourke just man-handles Lone in a bathroom with no trouble at all (at least, not until some girl bodyguards start shooting at Rourke.) I thought Triad leaders were supposed to be trained in martial-arts! (That's not a stereotype, that's really a part of their traditions & rituals.) Of course, Rourke should win. (After all, he's the "hero".) But he shouldn't have had it SO EASY. Rent it....but don't buy it!

Great Movie! When will it come out on DVD?:
This movie is the best cop show I have ever seen. Aside from its controversy and violence this show was well made. John Lone was at his best as always and Mickey Rourke was the same with attitude. I hope that the director would bring this great show out on DVD in stead of letting it collect dust!!! When it does come out buy it you won't be sorry!!!

Big loud movie that goes nowhere:
Mickey Rourke is NYPD Detective Stanley White, an angry white cop and marine Vietnam vet whose life seems to revolve around making a nightmare of everybody else's. Sent to Chinatown with the idea to stay out of trouble, White immediately butts heads with community figures he's convinced run the local mob. Not just a strictly law-and-order, White is on a mission against the larger evil of organized crime. Convinced that local Chinese mobsters are just tentacles of larger criminal syndicates called Triads (White educates his superiors that it was the Chinese, not the Italians who conceived "organized crime"), White pursues respected members of the City's Chinese community. Unfortunately, the situation is larger than White realizes - as Joey Tai (John Lone), an up-and-coming figure among the community, prepares to wrest control of the Triads from its aging leaders. Poised to flood America with narcotics from the golden triangle of southeast Asia, Tai soon realizes that White is more than an annoyance, and must be eliminated. Meanwhile, White proves less able to crack the Triads than his own career - alienating superiors who are convinced that he's harassing Tai. As Tai and White fight a war that soon becomes personal, the Triad readies itself to enter a new age in organized crime. This is yet the only Cimino flick I've ever seen, though it seems to confirm what I've heard about his inability to focus. You wander through the twisting alleys of the script and wonder just what it's all about. It's about drugs, and Chinese and white cops who prove willfully blind to the encroaching triads. But that doesn't begin to explain Stan White or his seemingly bottomless reservoir of piety. Why does he care so much? "How can anybody care too much?" he asks back. What does he really want? Arresting people for crimes isn't enough - he's out for the moral rot that bred the Triads, and sets out to war against Chinatown. We're supposed to assume that White's stint in the Marines has turned him into the perfect righteous cop, but that would make him a nightmare no matter where he was assigned (in his first few scenes he demonstrates his knowledge of the Triads suggesting a peculiar obsession for them). Equally unfortunate is that while "Dragon" has the makings of a character-driven flick, there are so few compelling characters populating it. A beautiful Chinese TV reporter w/whom White falls in love with, the aging leaders of the Triad, a young Chinese cop who sticks his neck out for White, Tai himself, White's lazy bosses, other cops - they're all one-note props next to Rourke's character. I vaguely recall this flick getting lambasted for its simplistic portrayal of Chinese Americans, but it's actually a simplistic portrayal of everything New York. John Lone again proves an actor of rare depth, but the script doesn't give him anything to fill it with. What's left is crass, angry and louder than Chinese New Year.

A Great Film:
This film got a bad reputation when left-leaning Chinese-American groups tried to brand it as racist, causing many film critics to play it safe and pan it rather than brave the ire of those groups. In truth, the only notable flaw in the film is the acting talents of Arianne; despite this, I found her tolerable as her interaction with Rourke was truly electric. As to the demagogues, I must say that they arrived a little late to the party: Cimino's Deer Hunter portrayed Asians in a much more demeaning light than anything here. Besides that, have any of those protesters seen the kinds of movies put out en masse from Hong Kong? They are much more glitzy violent than anything portrayed here (for example check out John Wu's "The Killer" or Hard-Boiled"). Mickey Rourke is awesome as usual, he defined cool in the 1980s just as Errol Flynn did for the 1930s. And just like Errol Flynn, he later descended into mediocrity, making poor personal decisions and then taking poor roles and minor roles which made a mockery of his previously fine work. But neither Flynn nor Rourke were as bad as OJ Simpson or Enron executives. You don't have to love what they became to enjoy what they previously achieved. In many ways Cimino fulfilled a potential avenue which Roman Polanski never explored in his 1974 neo-noir masterpiece, Chinatown. That film spent all of one scene in its namesake locale. Year of the Dragon takes us right into the heart of New York City's Chinatown, for better and for worse. Its a fairly conventional narrative, but you can almost smell the pastries cooking and wet garbage seething on those Manhattan streets. One of my three favorite Rourke films, along with Angel Heart and Francesco.