Post by ronnierocketago on Mar 24, 2008 15:24:22 GMT
YEAR OF THE DRAGON (1985) - ***1/2
"How can anybody care too much?"[/i][/size]
So after Mickey Rourke scored his first Oscar nomination for THE WRESTLER, and my epic review of directed Michael Cimino's infamous-production-that-nobody-has-watched-but-in-fact-is-actually-underrated HEAVEN'S GATE, I decided it its time for me to review another Rourke/Cimino effort. They worked together quite a few times from GATE (Rourke's second film credit) to THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE (Cimino shot a few scenes) to their DESPERATE HOURS remake, and well this one, which I'm reviewing if because I already own the DVD, and because of Rourke's comeback success, everyone at Netflix is renting out all his old movies. Maybe next time HOURS.
Twenty four years ago, Rourke was being cited as the next Marlon Brando for his pure physical acting charisma that he exhibited on the big screen. Nevermind being quite handsome to boot. Unfortunately, he did end up as the next Brando, at least in the knack for pissing away his career up by picking terrible scripts and working for the easy paycheck. I mean in the 1980s, with shit from 8 1/2 WEEKS to DINER, Richard Schickel over at Time magazine claimed that if Rourke had died after ANGEL HEART, he would have been immortalized this side of James Dean or Heath Ledger. Instead, he survived and when you end up playing the baddie in the Jean Claude Van Damme/Dennis Rodman vehicle DOUBLE TEAM. Like Brando in ON THE WATERFRONT, he could have been an acting contender, but he totally blew it.
But shortly before that downfall began, Rourke teamed up with blackballed Oscar winner Cimino on the adaptation of Robery Daley's crime plot boiler YEAR OF THE DRAGON. Ironically, Rourke was playing a character two decades older, or about the same age that he is now. The difference is obvious in that you have young Rourke underneath tons of phoney make-up, compared to his current meatface courtesy of boxing and botched plastic surgery yet both in the eyes still display the look of bitter vinegar disapointment with the lousy cards they've been dealt by life and themselves. Damn eerie.
YEAR is pure junk street crime melodrama material, a project that Cimino according to his DVD Audio Commentary claims he got only because producer Dino DeLaurentiis was about to lose the film rights to the book and wanted to make YEAR quick, and Cimino was the only name director in Hollywood willing to helm under such conditions. This is one of those movies that hack critics love to dismiss for "not being original enough" but alot like James Grey's much wrongly derided WE OWN THE NIGHT, it's still a compelling little film that triumphs both from (mostly) good acting from Rourke and cast, and Cimino artistically taking this story seriously.
Remember the original FRIDAY THE 13TH? As I noted in that review, It was a shameles rip-off of 1970s slashers, and it could have been a lazy uninspired clone. Instead, Sean Cunningham bothered to make a really effective thriler genre exercise that hits all the right narrative spots in legitimate tension, good scares, and a suspenseful atmosphere. Well YEAR OF THE DRAGON is sorta like that, except for the crime genre, though not as good. You get the idea.
I mean on paper, Rourke's role as a ruthless maverick cop waging an uncompromising dirty underworld war with a cynical attitude about "the system" does seem like another DIRTY HARRY clone. Many mindless actioneers would have stopped there, but Cimino added some nuance touches to a cliche. Back in 1985, YEAR was heavily criticized for being racist against Asians, specially Chinese-Americans, but that's like slamming THE SEARCHERS for hating on Native Americans. It's the whole fucking point.
Look, as a burned out Vietnam veteran, his days fighting the NVA in the jungles have left him with an angry vocal hostile prejudice against Asians. Sure he was blasting Vietnamese, a quite different ethnic group from the Chinese, but this racist doesn't give a shit. They all are "slant eyes" to him. Sure he goes all in trying to take down John Lone because he's a nasty Triad gangster, but that's just Rourke's excuse. He fought a losing war before, but he's determined to do whatever it takes (literally) to win this new conflict on the battlefield of Chinatown, for Lone is practically "Charlie" in Rourke's eyes.
Also, Oliver fucking Stone was Cimino's co-writer, fresh off his legendary scripting for Brian DePalma's SCARFACE. Hell Cimino further added that Stone practically wrote the YEAR screenplay, for Cimino was too busy with location scouting, casting, and other important production details so they could beat the deadline. Point is, I doubt an unashamed liberal like Stone would have worked on YEAR if he thought it was racist, right?
Plus while Clint Eastwood in those DIRTY HARRY pictures is a likeable badass with quotable dialogue which you can always get behind when he becomes a one-man army against the crooks of San Francisco, Rourke is more like what maybe a real Dirty Harry would be really like. This is ironic considering Cimino early in his career was a scriptwriter on the Dirty Harry picture MAGNUM FORCE. Rourke is self-righteous as hell, conducting illegal wire taps, people risking their lives for him are disposable for the sake of this just cause, threatening (or just beating up) anyone that doesn't do what he wants and just outright slurring people (including a possible love interest) just to piss them off. In short, the dude's an asshole, and you can't blame his wife for dumping him. I mean why put up with his bullshit?
Yet you get behind him, even if he's a dick, because he suffers for his crusade, and it took a toll on this viewer. If Rourke wasn't so damn good here or YEAR was crafted by lesser hands, I wouldn't give a shit and yet here I am engaged with a person that otherwise I would have despised and dismissed, sorta like John Wayne was in THE SEARCHERS. Good job Mick.
I guess the reason is Rourke's incredible chemistry together and apart with Lone, the villain smarter than Rourke who also won't backdown. Again It's a one-note part on script, and yet Lone somehow delivers a very memorable performance. Sure an intelligent crook adversary is nothing new, but I always like movie gangsters that aren't violent bastards because they enjoy it or evil for the movie's sake, but because its how their business operates. A deaf person can't exactly be a music critic, no? He's willing to be brutal to get the job done, just like Rourke.
I think it's a tragedy that the great Lone's Hollywood career highlights amounts to mostly being the title character of THE LAST EMPEROR, and the baddie here. He's a great talent with an exotic grasp on the English tongue that is simultaneously cultured and condescending, and unfortunately has been pigeonholed as the villain in garbage like RUSH HOUR 2 or whatever. Then again, why do Asians almost never get good film roles in Hollywood that doesn't involve kicking and jumping, or being fodder for the martial arts hero?
Take three scenes of his especially where he goes overseas and with smarts, balls, and and a machette, he takes control of a drug cartel. Maybe if Rourke had seen that dinner, he would have backed off. Second, when he screws up badly and his fellow Triad mobsters at a meeting openly mock him in front of his bandaged face, and Lone has to take it, while his eyes scheme revenge against Rourke and these jerkoffs laughing at his expense. Without dialogue in that one sequence, he outacts everyone in the entire movie! Third, well his powerful finale with Rourke. Again in idea it sounds utterly ridiculous, and yet it's poetic fitting that with such an intense bitter deadly adversarial relationship between cop and criminal, they might be the only two people in New York City who understand each other.
I could have lived without the Christ symbolism though, among other things in YEAR. I get that Rourke's hatred of the media is what one would expect from a middle-aged disgruntled white Catholic, but combine with that one moment of him gazing at the American flag. I assume there was legit artistic intention here (still looking for his America?), but my automatic reaction was that it came off as cheap emotional manipulation this side of the same flag as the ending shot in SPIDER-MAN. Also, model Ariane is just terrible as the lead actress. If her family was held at gunpoint, with ransom being that she delivered a good performance, well if I was her I wouldn't bother and start planning the funeral. If Rourke is emotionally all over the place, her temperant range is that of a teaspoon. She's nothing more than a mere breathing prop for Rourke, though she did have some nice tits though.
Then there is this scene, an embarrassing awkward spot of great unintentional comedy that has to be seen to be believed, and I can't blame people who felt it muted off the drama for them.
That's right, after the Triads car runs straight into a brick wall and explodes, Rourke hauls ass to the wreckage and drags the extra crispy driver straight out of the inferno. "It's evidence!" If he had then started to interrogate and rough up the body, I wouldn't have been shocked considering Rourke at this point.
Not to continue beating a dead corpse here, but Cimino's career never recovered from HEAVEN'S GATE and out of his subsequent pictures, YEAR is his best. Of course is that saying much? It's a solid crime tale, better than its reputation and better produced than it should be, along with a well-helmed gunfight sequence that apparently Quentin Tarantino is a great admirer of. Anyway, Cimino and Rourke teamed up to tell a story about a soldier continuing in his mind to fight a war, combating the enemy so long that he ends up falling in love with one of them.
I never noticed Cimino's clever allegory in YEAR about past American conflicts of numerous soldiers going overseas and coming home with foreign brides until he brought it up in his commentary, even citing war hero Stone's Vietnamese wife. Regardless if you like YEAR or not, rent the DVD at least for that great informative track. Learn how since NYC was too expensive for DeLaurentiis in the 1980s, the Chinatown that you see in YEAR was mostly giant impressive studio sets built in North Carolina, which fooled many, even native New Yorkers.
Hell after reviewing GATE and now YEAR OF THE DRAGON, I'm more and more convinced that Hollywood should give Cimino a pardon. It just pisses me off that great creative old talent from John Carpenter to John Milius to Cimino all should still be making movies and continue their unique contributions to American cinema because they're too good talent to be wasted, and yet here they are sitting at home doing nothing for years.
Meanwhile, hacks like Uwe Boll, Paul W.S. Anderson, and Rob Cohen are still working. Now that's a real fucking crime.