Year of the Dragon

Year of the Dragon is something of a little known masterpiece. It is well written by oliver stone, and directed by cimino at a turning point in his career. The centre piece, however, is Rourkes performance, which was caught while he most likely was at the peak of his acting ability's. You will be totally blown away by the realism of his acting, and it's even more noteworthy that the film was made while Rourke was youthful while making this and was made to look more senior (that grey hair is dye). A heartfelt performance from an actor playing a cop with "scar tissue on his soul", will never be forgotten once seen. While the main character is far from perfect, it is just that which makes him believable as well. Stanley White is on a crusade and would die for his principles, which effects all those involved with him. It is a complex film, often talky, which is punctuated throughout with explosive violence, well shot with use of excellent set pieces. Bloody in places and above all gritty and realistic, in parts it is even beautiful. The film works on many levels from it's slow burn beginnings with emphasis on conspiracy to the final pay off on the dock yards. Well drawn characters are everywhere in this film, and it never losses its hard edge. Rourke has seen a much needed and deserved return in recent years. He may have lost his handsome good looks due to boxing and due to too many face lifts, but the guy will never lose his acting ability. We, the true fans, never gave up on this chance. And now he's finally gaining popularity with a new generation, who need to see and experience The Year Of The Dragon, To believe the hype. Also check out his other classics Angel Heart and Barfly.

Year of the Dragon doesn't need too much plot write-up. I'll try in a sentence, just to test this: a tough-as-nails-racist-maybe-sexist-don't- play-by-the-rules-but-not-crooked-wannabe-Mickey-Spillane cop (Mickey Rourke) goes head-to-head with the Triads of New York's Chinatown, lead by a calm businessman-cum-psycho (John Lone) while juggling two lovers and a police force who don't like him much. There, let's move on: this movie is frustrating. Simple as it gets, Michael Cimino's rehabilitation from Heaven's Gate to try and get back into Hollywood's good graces (with Oliver Stone as his screenwriter) is preachy, loud, and full of BIG moments that should add up to more. Frankly, Heaven's Gate was more satisfying (if less tonally consistent) on simple entertainment/quality levels.

It's a little like the East Coast cousin of 1985's own To Live and Die in LA. But where Friedkin had a firmer grasp of William Peterson's anti-heroism with fantastic action set pieces, Cimino's direction is either just basic stuff (lots of people talking with dialog that is padded and just speaks too heavily on the points over and over again as if we didn't hear it the first time) and the action, with some exceptions like a climactic shoot-out by a train-line, cluttered and just TOO over the top. Yes, even for an 80's action movie.

Maybe there is some real interest here, in doing a story on the triads and gangs of Chinatown, or how it spreads to the exploitation of workers in sweat-shops and factories. It dances with that, and I'm sure Cimino and Stone did their research, but it doesn't add up to more than just a simplistic pot-boiler - and not a strong one either. Rourke certainly tries to act his ass off (or, sadly frankly, sometimes over the top as well, or smirking through scenes), and John Lone certainly makes good back-up. Other players, like Ariane as the One Female Reporter who will get the scoop (cause, you know, there aren't any other reporters who might cover a big crime war in New York city except for the one Chinese one), are not very good at all except in one note turns.

And maybe more than anything, the consistent tone of just nastiness from this character of Stanley White, which also permeates other cop and gangster characters, left a bad taste in my mind watching it. There are moments where other characters call Stanley on his myriad of faults - and that he uses Vietnam as a crutch for his issues and as another Rambo 'still fighting the war' (how obvious they tell us, more than once, almost makes Rambo: First Blood Part II subtle by comparison) - and yet none of it really stuck with me to have any kind of feeling for the character except distaste. Again, Rourke does try to make him sorta likable... which could make it worse. When he cries in Ariane's character's apartment for not having anyone else to go to, and a tear goes down his cheek in close-up, there was just indifference there between myself and what was going on. Not good.

Yet Cimino does pull off moments that do work, shots that can get excited about. Hell, even a scene I didn't expect to work, which is a funeral for a (should be more) significant character as the second plot turn, was touching for how Cimino held back and let the big emotion swell instead of being the same high pitch. But for all that should be well-intentioned in Year of the Dragon, or 'realistic' as based on a Robert (Prince of the City) Daly book, it just isn't. Year of the Dragon is dated, probably racist Hollywood trash which fluctuates too much between something better and something s**t too often.

Cimino shows that he is a crass and hysteric filmmaker here. His sensibilities place him somewhere between Cecil B. DeMille and Francis Coppola. He's got to film big, so even a cop flick about violence in Chinatown has to be a saga. There's no weight to it, it just has to be a sprawling story that's only vaguely about social issues of importance. He's got to have both the scope and relevance, preferably something to brood over. He's got to have lots of people and lots of scenery in the frame. There's a pretty ludicrous scene set in backwoods Thailand that only seems to exist so that a Triad boss can majestically gallop in view of a swarm of soldiers (and later brandish a severed head).

There's nothing worse than a filmmaker who can only leverage ambition and control in his art (Coppola once in a while had good intuitions). So at its most profound, cinematic beauty is at perfume ad level here, say a woman in silhouette sliding into a majestic night-view of New York. What's the term, 'elephant art'? I say it doesn't breathe.

Worst of all, since he is very much a storyteller, these days a novelist living in Paris, his dramatic sense is a lot of puff and noise on a typewriter. It has no life. It's screen writing 101 like in one of those books that tell you about the 'hero's journey' and where to put the 'inciting incident': the couple is growing bitter and distant, and it's right on the first scene that they have to curse, yell, and throw things as they explain all that's wrong between them: he's never at home, he doesn't care, she wants a baby.

And he's got the ideal writing partner for this. Oliver Stone: so angry barbs at the media, school-lessons in American and Chinese history, and Vietnam is behind all of it. It's all abrasive on this end, as is Stone.

Mickey Roorke, usually game for roles that call for lots of smirking and boyish thrashing-about, is the violent, crazy, anguished new sheriff in 'Town. He browbeats and ridicules the Chinese journalist girl and of course she goes to bed with him the moment he has finished doing so, because what's more charming than a 'flawed protagonist'.

The film is bookended by public funeral processions and that could have been something, connoting obsession, artificial images, false narratives. Watch John Lone in M. Butterfly for that. Watch Fukasaku for chaotic action.

This is the first movie in Rourke's golden years: Year of the dragon (1985), 9 1/2 weeks (1986), Angel Heart (1987), Barfly (1987): every single one underrated IMO. His glory started to erode heavily with Johnny Handsome (1989), really hit an all-time low with Wild Orchid (1990) and confirms that as the Marlboro Man's sidekick Harley Davidson (1991). Nevertheless I'm sorry that his footage was cut out of the Thin Red Line (1998), because I like his style. Michael Cimino (Thunderbolt&Lightfoot, Deerhunter) and cinematographer Alex Thomson (Excalibur, the Keep, Legend) apparently know their way in the eighties as well, although the story plays just before.

Is the recent wave of violence in Chinatown caused by Stanley White, the new (Polish originate) gung-ho sheriff in N.Y. Chinatown, or by the hunger for power by the young chinese gangsters? White, ironically, makes his own job harder because he has serious trouble respecting the Chinese in any way. Stanley hits the crime in chinatown like Popeye Doyle in the tradition of the French Connection, instead of a sheriff with brains. He will have to pay for his callousness and hypocrisy.

'Year of the dragon' depicts some of the the money and gambling problems of the Chinese in an early but profound eighties' style. The score sounds cheap, but fortunately is scarce too. I particularly like the noirish feel of this way-above-average cop-flick. Michael Mann could only wish he made this: it's one of my favourite tv-movies. The few negative points are probably due to interference of producer Dino de Laurentiis. 8/10

Cimino has crafted a tough, gritty policier. I went into this film thinking that it would be mediocre at best. Boy, was I surprised. An intelligent script and passionate performances keep this film moving along. The movie kept me enthralled throughout it's length.