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| MGM/UA Entertainment Company | Release Date: August 16, 1985 |
Starring:
Ariane, Caroline Kava, Eddie Jones, Joey Chin, John Lone, K. Dock Yip, Leonard Termo, Mickey Rourke, Raymond J. Barry, Victor Wong
Summary:
A police detective cracks down on organized crime in Chinatown after the murders of Triad and Mafia leaders.
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Year of the Dragon is a first-rate cops vs. the mob melodrama which restores Michael Cimino's reputation as a gifted filmmaker. [2 Sept 1985]
Unquestionably, Cimino’s eye for detail and insistence thereon has paid off in his impressive recreation of Chinatown at producer Dino De Laurentiis’ studios in North Carolina. Crammed with an array of interesting characters, including the extras in the background, Dragon brims with authenticity.
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Its metaphors are too obvious (as before, Cimino's analogy for death is more death) and its treatment of social problems is skin-deep. Although the screenplay throws sops to many cultural and ethnic groups, it's riddled with racist and sexist attitudes. [23 Aug 1985, p.25]
Once again Cimino's ability to handle furious action set pieces is well to the fore: a shootout in a Chinese restaurant and a battle with two pistol-packing Chinese punkettes put him in the Peckinpah class. The connecting material, however, is by turns muddled, crass and dull, amounting mostly to Stanley's interminable self-justification.
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Cimino's instincts are right -- the movie is outsized, and it needs baroque dialogue; you get the sense that he'd recognize the right dialogue if he heard it. But when he actually has to come up with it, the result is a series of outrageous hooters: "I've got scar tissue on my soul"; "I carried the cross with you, in Brooklyn and in Queens."
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