Thoughts on Year of the Dragon

 

via IMDB

"I'm tired of all this 'Chinese this, Chinese that.' You people, you think gambling, extortion, corruption are kosher? Because it's 1,000 years old? Well, all this 1,000-year-old stuff, it's a lot of shit to me. This is America you're living in and it's 200 years old. So you better get your clocks fixed. You're not special, and you're not beyond the law ... any more than the Puerto Ricans and the Polacks. So we're all gonna obey the law the way it says. So start doing something about it, and fast, or you're all gonna suffer. You can believe that."

Well, it was bound to happen. Already in 1985, there was Code of Silence, where Chuck Norris takes on organized crime and corrupt law enforcement. Soon after, there was Rambo: First Blood Part II, where Sylvester Stallone belatedly wins the Vietnam War. Now we have Year of the Dragon, directed by Michael Cimino, who co-adapted Robert Daley's novel with Oliver Stone. When it doesn't call to mind slightly better movies, Dragon exists as an uncomfortable fusion of old school storytelling (an antihero cut from Bogart cloth) and new school spectacle (so much violence), as well as a deconstruction of the one man against all odds idea. You're barely happy to see Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) succeed.

A well-respected but widely disliked cop, White has been assigned to Chinatown with the orders to crack down on youth gangs. He'd rather go significantly further, taking on the triad that's under the new leadership of Joey Tai (John Lone). White, who's already made his incorruptibility clear to Tai and the triad's old guard, proceeds to alienate everyone. There's Tracy Tzu (Ariane), a Chinese-American TV reporter with whom he enters a relationship apparently built on hatefucking. There's Connie (Caroline Kava), White's wife, whose relationship with him is apparently built on ballbusting. There's Lou (Raymond J. Barry), who seems to exist so White (or Cimino/Stone) has a straw man to annihilate.  

"I'm sick and tired of Vietnam as an excuse for everything you guys do. You act like everyone in World War II and Korea came home to a picnic. Well, it wasn't. We lost 50,000 men in Korea, too. Nobody gave a shit. But we fitted in. Why can't you fit in? What is it that's so different?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know what I'm talking about. You're not one of them professional veterans ... making a career out of pissing and groaning about the war. You made something out of yourself. But you're still acting like you're on a crusade. You think you've got the right to trample over everything. We got an arrangement, a treaty with these Chinese. However tarnished it is, it works. Life is arrangement, Stanley. Life is getting along. That's why this neighborhood is what it is. That's why eight million people every day in this city can function."

"Lou, I don't wanna argue with you anymore, all right? Honest, I don't. Take it easy."

"You need anything, you call me, you hear? There's always a bed at my place."

"... You know, your arrangement is what killed Connie, Lou."

Tracy, Connie and Lou are among the people who give White a "reason you suck" speech, but none of them seem to sink in. It makes a more-than-two-hour movie feel especially tedious. Eventually, I began anticipating attempted game-changer moments every 15 minutes or so. I will give Cimino/Stone credit: the attack in White's home caught me off guard. Along with many of them being just plain problematic -- I really wasn't prepared to hear Mickey Rourke whitesplain so often for so long -- Dragon's speeches often kill the movie's momentum. It's a pity, since I was mostly digging Wolf Kroeger's production design. A demerit for the fake looking skyscraper, though, when an assassin is caught on a busy street.

Rourke isn't particularly awful in Dragon, but he comes across as too young and missing hard-boiled gravitas. I didn't mind Ariane's performance, but I feel like it was in service of an underwritten character (even if I did appreciate Tracy's brief defense of the press). As with Born on the Fourth of July, Kava gets a character that is damn near impossible to play while Barry is able to act against the grain. That goes double for Lone, who is reasonably compelling amid the spectacle. Then again, when you hired Cimino and Stone back in the day, I guess you weren't expecting something understated.

"There are those who liken Chinatown to a skating pond. On the surface, we see a lovely landscape of snowflakes and skaters. But underneath, the cannibal fish: gangs. The sharks. And the whales. All move in deadly swarms. These bosses, some are beginning to say, are part of an international crime network with its headquarters in Hong Kong. Everyone denies it, but in the wake of the shootings of Joey Tai and Ronnie Chang, questions are mushrooming left and right. Charges of illegal wiretapping have been levied by H.J. Yung, head of the Hun San, resulting in the removal of Captain Stanley White. One wonders if this is not a smoke screen to distract from the main issue, which is what part the Hun San plays in this Chinese opera. Tracy Tzu, Chinatown."

Not Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "You're a hell of a reporter, honey. You're talking to a guy with a bag on his head and cotton in his ears. Stick around, you might learn something."

-- Box Office: Grossing $18.7 million on a budget reportedly between $21.5-$24 million, this opened at No. 5 and came in at No. 47 for 1985.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "Crammed with an array of interesting characters, including the extras in the background, Dragon brims with authenticity," according to Variety. "Often so inept it's funny," People wrote. Pauline Kael: "A form of hysterical, rabble-rousing pulp, yet it isn't involving; it doesn't have the propulsion of good pulp storytelling."

-- Critic's Corner, the director: "It is no pleasure to report that Mr. Cimino's reputation as the man who best exemplifies what can go wrong with big-ego, big-budget film making remains unchallenged," Janet Maslin wrote. "Beyond the color and the corpses, though, Cimino fails to focus on an idea and stick with it," Variety concluded. People: "Mike, have you thought of driving a bus or becoming a piano tuner or otherwise doing something useful?"

-- Fanservice Junction: Maslin on Ariane: "She is so ineffectual a part of the film's framework that she is even upstaged, in a nude scene, by a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge."

-- This is the second of two 1985 movies with production design by Kroeger. Ladyhawke was first. Stunt coordinator Wayne "Buddy" Van Horn previously did Pale Rider.

-- Awards Watch: Dragon scored Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture (Lone) and Best Original Score, both of which it lost to Out of Africa. It also scored five Golden Raspberry nominations, for Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay (losing both to First Blood: Part II), Worst Director (losing to Rocky IV) and Worst Actress and Worst New Star (both for Ariane, who lost to Linda Blair and Brigitte Nielsen, respectively).

-- Hey, It's the Mid '80s!: Glengarry Glen Ross is advertised on a bus when White tries to get Tracy to take him to her place. The Shanghai Palace attackers' hideout has a poster for The Eurythmics' Touch.

-- Memorable Music: The score is 37-28, still favoring songs written for movies. Dragon's non-entry is "Infatuation," playing before the Shanghai Palace attackers are killed. The movie's entry is a cover of "Honey (Tian Mi Mi)" sung before the Shanghai Palace attack and over the end credits.

Courtesy YouTube

-- "You're flying too high, kid, and the air is very thin up there." Cliched sentiment, certainly, but it comes across effectively from a man using an electrolarynx.

-- Next: Teen Wolf. On deck: Better Off Dead and Compromising Positions. Soon: Crossover Dreams and Creator.