eric262003 Deep in the heart of New York City's Chinatown lives a ruthless group of evil masterminds who's legacy's been dated thousands of years. There motives are focused on greed, corruption and power. The kingpin behind this organization is a hardened criminal named Joey Tai (John Lone) as its his mission to wage war on the fortified interests in both the Asian and Italian communities in the profitable drug trade. The streets are drenched in blood. That is until dedicated Police Detective Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) steps in and takes over Chinatown. Joining forces along with a news journalist by his side, white engages in a confrontation against the mayhem on this turf. The fight that's coming at both enemies is quite inevitable. It's all in the matter of who will survive.When I see Mickey Rourke perform in this movie, it gives me a lighter feeling in my head. He is a walking demonstration of method acting if you ever would find the definition of it. His acting, his clothing and his physical appearance truly is what I expected from in the character of Stanley White (based on the best selling novel by Robert Daley). Rourke was custom made to play the role of Stanley white. I just could not see any other performer capable of pulling off this very complex character. John Lone was also impressive as the evil kingpin Joey Tai as he proves to be a fierce competitor for Det. White. Lone, who is one of the most talented performers in the Asian goes beyond the parameters of just being a one-dimensional sneering villain. There are plenty of diabolical incidents he accomplishes in this movie that will even make the audience cheer for him. He can even make Chow Yun-Fat green with envy. After a five year sabbatical from the disaster "Heaven's Gate", director Michael Cimino did indeed make a winner here. This is one film that deserves the purchase and should never be left on the shelves unwatched. If you are a fan of underworld Hong Kong films, look no further. You may even be impressed by the soundtrack. It adds flavour to every scene, very similar to "The Deer Hunter".Granted people totally dismiss me when tell them that Mickey Rourke is in this movie. Sure back in the 1990's Rourke has been in trouble with the law and walked off sets for unjustifiable reasons, and has lacked in bravado over the years. But back in the 1980's he rocked. Today with the exception of "The Wrestler", he has been lowered to making direct-to-DVD films and his once handsome face looks like it has been molded like soft clay (thanks to some botched up plastic surgery). But don't let his downward spiral get the best out of everyone, you must see Rourke in his glory days when he was a hungry young thespian who wanted a little action.If I was to pick any sore thumbs about this movie, for me it was the performance from Ariane, a model trying to release her acting chops as love interest to the married Stanley white, Tracy Tzu. She can't seem to act her way out of a paper bag. Many times it feels as though she's just memorizing and reading off lines off script. she really is that unconvincing. She does have her moments, but it's very few and far between.For all those people who hated the way we dressed in the 1980's, well too bad. The Triad dresses exactly like the way punks used to dress like back in the Dark Ages; complete with baggy pants, Members Only Jackets, spikes and exotic coloured hair spray. I mean what do expect. It was released in 1985, duh. What more do you want?

Leofwine_draca Quite a few of these east-meets-west thrillers have been made over the years, from the good (the likes of THE YAKUZA and RISING SUN) to the bad (Ridley Scott's ridiculously over-stylised BLACK RAIN). YEAR OF THE DRAGON is a particularly unknown one, despite being a lengthy, sometimes epic-feeling production starring one of the decade's hottest stars, written by Oliver Stone, and directed by THE GODFATHER's Michael Cimino.It turns out to be a strong and eventful movie, one that's expertly directed and packed with sudden outbursts of gritty violence that really shock the senses. Despite his dodgily-coloured hair, Mickey Rourke gives a career-best turn as the detective attempting to clean up Chinatown. What ensues is never less than gripping, highly watchable and completely entertaining.The Asian cast members give solid performances, from the criminally underrated John Lone as the bad guy to the virtually unknown Ariane as the love interest. Stone's tough dialogue zings with malice and intrigue, and there are relatively low levels of contrivance and coincidence; the characters come first in this movie, and it's all the better for it. I loved every minute of it.

MisterWhiplash Year of the Dragon doesn't need too much plot write-up. I'll try in a sentence, just to test this: a tough-as-nails-racist-maybe-sexist-don't- play-by-the-rules-but-not-crooked-wannabe-Mickey-Spillane cop (Mickey Rourke) goes head-to-head with the Triads of New York's Chinatown, lead by a calm businessman-cum-psycho (John Lone) while juggling two lovers and a police force who don't like him much. There, let's move on: this movie is frustrating. Simple as it gets, Michael Cimino's rehabilitation from Heaven's Gate to try and get back into Hollywood's good graces (with Oliver Stone as his screenwriter) is preachy, loud, and full of BIG moments that should add up to more. Frankly, Heaven's Gate was more satisfying (if less tonally consistent) on simple entertainment/quality levels. It's a little like the East Coast cousin of 1985's own To Live and Die in LA. But where Friedkin had a firmer grasp of William Peterson's anti-heroism with fantastic action set pieces, Cimino's direction is either just basic stuff (lots of people talking with dialog that is padded and just speaks too heavily on the points over and over again as if we didn't hear it the first time) and the action, with some exceptions like a climactic shoot-out by a train-line, cluttered and just TOO over the top. Yes, even for an 80's action movie. Maybe there is some real interest here, in doing a story on the triads and gangs of Chinatown, or how it spreads to the exploitation of workers in sweat-shops and factories. It dances with that, and I'm sure Cimino and Stone did their research, but it doesn't add up to more than just a simplistic pot-boiler - and not a strong one either. Rourke certainly tries to act his ass off (or, sadly frankly, sometimes over the top as well, or smirking through scenes), and John Lone certainly makes good back-up. Other players, like Ariane as the One Female Reporter who will get the scoop (cause, you know, there aren't any other reporters who might cover a big crime war in New York city except for the one Chinese one), are not very good at all except in one note turns.And maybe more than anything, the consistent tone of just nastiness from this character of Stanley White, which also permeates other cop and gangster characters, left a bad taste in my mind watching it. There are moments where other characters call Stanley on his myriad of faults - and that he uses Vietnam as a crutch for his issues and as another Rambo 'still fighting the war' (how obvious they tell us, more than once, almost makes Rambo: First Blood Part II subtle by comparison) - and yet none of it really stuck with me to have any kind of feeling for the character except distaste. Again, Rourke does try to make him sorta likable... which could make it worse. When he cries in Ariane's character's apartment for not having anyone else to go to, and a tear goes down his cheek in close-up, there was just indifference there between myself and what was going on. Not good.Yet Cimino does pull off moments that do work, shots that can get excited about. Hell, even a scene I didn't expect to work, which is a funeral for a (should be more) significant character as the second plot turn, was touching for how Cimino held back and let the big emotion swell instead of being the same high pitch. But for all that should be well-intentioned in Year of the Dragon, or 'realistic' as based on a Robert (Prince of the City) Daly book, it just isn't. Year of the Dragon is dated, probably racist Hollywood trash which fluctuates too much between something better and something s**t too often.

chaos-rampant Cimino shows that he is a crass and hysteric filmmaker here. His sensibilities place him somewhere between Cecil B. DeMille and Francis Coppola. He's got to film big, so even a cop flick about violence in Chinatown has to be a saga. There's no weight to it, it just has to be a sprawling story that's only vaguely about social issues of importance. He's got to have both the scope and relevance, preferably something to brood over. He's got to have lots of people and lots of scenery in the frame. There's a pretty ludicrous scene set in backwoods Thailand that only seems to exist so that a Triad boss can majestically gallop in view of a swarm of soldiers (and later brandish a severed head).There's nothing worse than a filmmaker who can only leverage ambition and control in his art (Coppola once in a while had good intuitions). So at its most profound, cinematic beauty is at perfume ad level here, say a woman in silhouette sliding into a majestic night-view of New York. What's the term, 'elephant art'? I say it doesn't breathe.Worst of all, since he is very much a storyteller, these days a novelist living in Paris, his dramatic sense is a lot of puff and noise on a typewriter. It has no life. It's screen writing 101 like in one of those books that tell you about the 'hero's journey' and where to put the 'inciting incident': the couple is growing bitter and distant, and it's right on the first scene that they have to curse, yell, and throw things as they explain all that's wrong between them: he's never at home, he doesn't care, she wants a baby.And he's got the ideal writing partner for this. Oliver Stone: so angry barbs at the media, school-lessons in American and Chinese history, and Vietnam is behind all of it. It's all abrasive on this end, as is Stone.Mickey Roorke, usually game for roles that call for lots of smirking and boyish thrashing-about, is the violent, crazy, anguished new sheriff in 'Town. He browbeats and ridicules the Chinese journalist girl and of course she goes to bed with him the moment he has finished doing so, because what's more charming than a 'flawed protagonist'.The film is bookended by public funeral processions and that could have been something, connoting obsession, artificial images, false narratives. Watch John Lone in M. Butterfly for that. Watch Fukasaku for chaotic action.