Review of Year of the Dragon (1985) by Michael O — 29 Dec 2008

O boy, there are so many aspects of this movie that add up to bad. It's criminal how bad the script is written and worse yet how it attempts to give a dark, important message about the law.

Key moments of masculine stupidity are: Rourke's character's wife being murdered conveniently so that he can bang his younger girlfriend in peace. Better still, her death severs a shaky plotline. Then another gem is his young girlfriend getting raped and when Rourke shows no sensitivity to her rape, he's scolded and loathed, only to forgive him in the end, after going out to kill the man responsible for her rape, for reasons that have nothing to do with her- the same reasons she scolded and hated him for.

The last key moment of unrivaled dumbness is the film itself which I suppose is a self-reflexive commentary of the very authors of the film. The character Stone and Cimino have illustrated is a racist, explosive, Vietnam obsessed man who like them, as they must believe, is still fighting the good fight while everyone else rallies against them.

It's unbelievable.