Year of the Dragon (1985) MGM/Action-Drama RT: 134 minutes Rated R (strong violence, language, racial epithets, sexual content, full frontal nudity, drug material) Director: Michael Cimino Screenplay: Oliver Stone and Michael Cimino Music: David Mansfield Cinematography: Alex Thomson Release date: August 16, 1985 (US) Cast: Mickey Rourke, John Lone, Ariane, Leonard Termo, Ray Barry, Caroline Kava, Eddie Jones, Joey Chin, Victor Wong, K. Dock Yip, Pao Han Lin, Way Dong Woo, Jimmy Sun, Daniel Davin, Mark Hammer, Dennis Dun, Jack Kehler, Steven Chen, Paul Scaglione, Joseph Bonaventura, Jilly Rizzo, Tony Lip, Fabia Drake, Tisa Chang, Gerald Orange, Fan Mui Sang, Yukio Yamamato, Doreen Chang, Harry Yip. Box Office: $18.7M (US)
Rating: ***
Ah, 80s excess! No film illustrates it better than Brian De Palma’s gangster saga Scarface. It’s The Godfather on coke. BUT if you’re looking for a true master of Reagan-era excess, look no further than Michael Cimino whose expensive flop Heaven’s Gate not only put a major studio (United Artists) out of business, it also put an end to director-driven filmmaking. Five years went by before his next project, the crime thriller Year of the Dragon. While not as costly as Heaven’s Gate, it still reveled in glorious excess with its story of a veteran cop trying to end organized crime in New York’s Chinatown. In other hands (e.g. Sidney Lumet), it might have been a smaller-scale production. In Cimino’s hands, it’s HUGE! It’s also pretty good.
Get a load of the talent line-up on Year of the Dragon. Cimino not only directs, he also co-wrote the screenplay with Scarface scribe Oliver Stone. It’s based on a novel by Richard Daley, the real life NYPD Deputy Commissioner who also wrote the non-fiction book Prince of the City which was adapted into a great movie by Sidney Lumet. Frequent Cimino collaborator David Mansfield composed the score. Mickey Rourke, star of The Pope of Greenwich Village and 9 ½ Weeks, plays the lead. The movie has gangs, drugs, ethnic stereotypes, violence and an AWESOME shoot-out in a Chinese restaurant. It has 1985 written all over it.
Rourke plays Stanley White, a highly decorated police captain who’s just been transferred to Chinatown to deal with the youth gangs running the streets and terrorizing people. In the movie’s opening moments, they assassinate the leader of the local triad and execute a shopkeeper for refusing to pay extortion. It’s all a ploy to get the elders to turn over leadership to Joey Tai (Lone, Iceman), a young, ambitious gangster who wants to change the way they’ve done things for the past 1000 years. That means breaking an uneasy truce with the Italian Mafia and taking a more active role in the drug trade.
Stanley’s an interesting guy. He’s Polish-American and a Vietnam vet. His marriage to longtime sweetheart Connie (Kava, Born on the Fourth of July) is already on the rocks when he becomes involved with Asian reporter Tracy Tzu (Ariane) who he convinces to do an expose on criminal activity in Chinatown. Stanley doesn’t play by the rules. He doesn’t care about the unspoken understanding the police department has had with Chinatown for many years. He doesn’t care about chain of command either when he goes over the head of his CO/childhood friend Lou (Barry, The Ref) in order to recruit an inexperienced academy cadet (Dun, Big Trouble in Little China) to go undercover in Joey’s organization.
To be fair, Heaven’s Gate isn’t that bad a movie. It’s definitely not as bad as its reputation suggests. It’s extremely flawed. It’s ostentatious and too damn long. But one can see that Cimino wasn’t just winging it as many of today’s filmmakers are prone to do. Year of the Dragon, while flawed, is a better movie. Once again, Cimino goes into it with high aspirations. He wants to make a taut crime drama/character study. He returns to some of the themes of his finest film The Deer Hunter- i.e. religion. It’s not an overt theme; it hovers in the background with several shots of the Catholic church near Stanley’s street. Also (and most obviously), there’s the idea of Stanley being a Vietnam vet. It factors heavily into the story. His experiences over there are responsible for his racist attitudes toward Asians.
Where Year of the Dragon falters is in its attempt to draw a parallel between Stanley and Joey. It’s pretty vague but if you think about it, they’re not too different from each other. Neither one of them has respect for rules or traditions.
Despite some pacing issues, Year of the Dragon works pretty well as a crime drama. It has a few good action sequences like the aforementioned scene at the restaurant. Two young punks come in and shoot up the place. Stanley just happens to be there with Tracy. The climax with Stanley and Joey facing off in a final confrontation is well done. The movie slows down a bit with a trip to Thailand where Joey makes a bold deal with a major drug supplier, but there’s a cool scene involving a severed head.
From an artistic standpoint, Year of the Dragon is quite good. The cinematography by Alex Thomson is terrific. The action scenes are well orchestrated. The score has a real Asian flavor. Rourke does a fine job as Stanley despite the obvious aging makeup. His hair keeps changing to different shades of gray. Lone is great as Joey Tai, a dangerous and ruthless criminal who will stop at nothing to take over Chinatown even if it puts him at odds with the Italians. Ariane is a terrible actress. Her line readings are as convincing as a student in a high school play. There’s a reason she never made another movie (unless you count her appearance in King of New York). Kava plays Caroline as an unpleasant shrew always ready to start a fight with her husband. She’s so unlikable you’re relieved when she makes her bloody exit.
At the time of its release, there were complaints of Year of the Dragon being racist. Members of the Chinese community complained that it spread unfair and inaccurate ethnic stereotypes. The studio released it with a disclaimer saying that it’s not meant to be an accurate depiction of the Chinese-American community. I say it’s just a movie.
I like Year of the Dragon a lot. It’s not a great film but it is very good. It has flaws but it’s stylish, gritty and mostly compelling. It takes you inside a world not accessible to outsiders. I can’t speak for how realistic it is, but it makes for an entertaining cop movie.
