Review of Year of the Dragon (1985) by Matthew F. J — 04 Sep 2013

Intense crime thriller from director Michael Cimino and co-scripter Oliver Stone pulls no punches until near the very end. Percolating hostilities finally boil over in New York City's Chinatown, between racist ex-marine cop Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) and Joey Tai (John Lone), recently promoted top man to a shadowy international triad.

When the hotheaded White is assigned by his own superiors to make petty arrests of Asian gang members as a public relations gesture, he turns it into a personal crusade to clean up the streets, straining the delicate arrangement between corrupt authorities and Tai's criminal organization.

The situation escalates into a messy blood bath and turns even more personal for the policeman when his family is targeted. Reviled in 1985 as xenophobic, the picture is actually quite vocal in its denunciation of the "heroic" White's prejudices.

In fact, the concern over race is so ubiquitous it doesn't even qualify as subtext. From the Chinese-American news reporter who improbably becomes White's mistress to his emotionally abused wife and an equally abused undercover rookie, everybody's given at least one big scene in which they get their licks in against the foul-mouthed cop, reminding him and the audience of what an uncouth and racist scumbag he is.

The film's foremost achievement is its willingness to follow this broken, ambiguous man right over the brink without softening or diluting his opposition; as Joey Tai, Lone is cunning and brutal in the longstanding tradition of movie Mafiosi, and the tension between these two adversaries is as palpable as it gets.

Cimino handles the action sequences and (relatively) quieter dramatic moments with equal aplomb, and the script sounds notes that will be familiar to viewers of his earlier "The Deer Hunter" and Stone's "Platoon," released a year later.

Only a poorly calculated last-minute denouement involving Rourke's character keeps this from being a classic of its genre.