Year of the Dragon

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Cast & Crew

Mickey Rourke
Stanley White

John Lone
Joey Tai

Ariane
Tracy Tzu

Leonard Termo
Angelo Rizzo

Raymond Barry
Louis Bukowski

Caroline Kava
Connie White

Eddie Jones
William McKenna

Joey Chin
Ronnie Chang

Victor Wong
Harry Yung

Sammy Lee
Pei Brother

Michael Cimino
Director

Dino De Laurentiis
Producer

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Critic Reviews for Year of the Dragon

Audience Reviews for Year of the Dragon

• Jun 28, 2011

  I liked everything about Year Of The Dragon except Mickey Rourke.I think it could've been a better movie if someone else was cast in the role of Stanley White ( Bruce Willis?) I just didn't get into Rourke's character until after his wife got killed, Then his character started to get interesting.Before that his role felt dull & flat.Maybe it was him or maybe it was the movie.Other then that, It was a good flick.
  Brody M Super Reviewer
• Nov 30, 2010

  Many people claim that The Deer Hunter is Michael Cimino's only good movie. However, this is just as good if not better. Probably one of the greatest crime epics to ever be made, this really has it all. Mickey Rourke shows his muscle and stubbornness, his manliness is almost off the scale. It takes the concept of a one man war on crime and really puts it to a realistic test. You can't win anything without losing some too. The action in this movie is flawless, violent yet somehow incredibly tasteful. It's almost like a French Connection type of cop mentality thrown into Chinatown.
  Conner R Super Reviewer
• May 22, 2010

  Michael Cimino's explosive, ultra-violent epic crime drama which would prove to be his last great film. About a jaded, single-minded, racist police captain named Stanley White, who is a real fearless bad ass, and a Vietnam war Marine veteran, brilliantly played by Mickey Rourke in a mesmerizing, powerhouse performance. He is on a crusade to bring down corruption, extortion and murder in New York City's Chinatown by the Chinese youth gangs which run by a savvy, reptilian Triad crime lord, Joey Tai, played magnificently by the gifted Asian actor John Lone. White must balance his intense desire to capture Tai, with his intense feelings for a beautiful Asian television news reporter, TracyTzu, well-played by Ariane, who is helping him with his crusade against this powerful suave crime lord, despite the protests of his brought-off supervisors who all hate him because he constantly points out their hypocrisies. The adrenaline-charged violence is amazing, including a show-stopping gunmen attack on a posh Chinatown restaurant, and a frenzied white-knuckled climax which is a bravura piece of film-making. Skillful direction by the late Cimino, with a compelling screenplay by Oliver Stone. But the centerpiece of this film is Rourke who will totally blow you away by the realism and intensity of his acting. Fantastic supporting performances from Caroline Kava, Raymond J. Barry, Victor Wong, and Dennis Dun. Extraordinary cinematography by the late great Alex Thomson, and a superb score by David Mansfield. A unique, forgotten cinematic gem from the 80's. Highly Recommended
  Danny R Super Reviewer
• Feb 15, 2010

  MICHAEL CIMINO has a distinctive way of making things look and sound, but he could never be accused of having a style. If style is a director's way of shaping and intensifying his audience's perceptions, then what Mr. Cimino has amounts to its very antithesis. In ''Year of the Dragon,'' a busy and elaborate film that manages to be inordinately messy, his tactics are a constant distraction, dissipating the viewer's interest at every turn. That, even more than excess, was the fundamental problem with ''Heaven's Gate,'' and it is still every bit as egregious. It is no pleasure to report that Mr. Cimino's reputation as the man who best exemplifies what can go wrong with big-ego, big-budget film making remains unchallenged. ''Year of the Dragon,'' based on a much more fast-paced and informative novel by Robert Daley, tells what happens when this captain is assigned to Chinatown and charged with controlling the violence of the youth gangs there. He finds that his adversary is a handsome young businessman (played by John Lone, who had the title role in ''Iceman'') who also doubles as an underworld kingpin. Though Mr. Cimino shepherds the whole movie toward a closing confrontation between these rivals, he typically deflates the ending by sapping the impact of their earlier encounters. They never seem to meet alone, since most of their talks take place in settings that are either overpopulated or full of attention-getting props. The conversations they do have are interrupted by constant and maladroit editing; indeed, the editing is so partial to uninteresting background detail and irrelevant reaction shots that it is the film's single worst feature. At times, Mr. Cimino further heightens his tendency to lose the actors in a larger tapestry by shooting them with a wide-angle lens. As for the larger tapestry here, Chinatown was built in North Carolina for the film, and it has been recreated down to the last noodle. Production notes explain that close attention was paid to such details as the grading of street surfaces and the installation of pipes to vent steam from the manhole covers. However, the effect is that of a colossal blur, since Mr. Cimino has so little facility for focusing the attention on anything in particular. Even worse, all this meticulousness becomes crushingly literal. Without any gift for simplicity or shorthand, the director must spell out absolutely everything. To show that someone is a general, he must - and does, in one particularly overscaled sequence here - surround him with an entire army. The actors fare particularly badly under such circumstances. Mr. Rourke, who almost always generates a relaxed, knowing magnetism, is entirely lost in the underwritten role of a middle-aged policeman. He must also grapple with the flat-footed, heavily scatological dialogue that seems just as out of place here as it did in ''Heaven's Gate.'' (The screenplay is by the director and Oliver Stone.) Mr. Rourke is never able to give much conviction to the lines that have him frequently comparing Chinatown's gangland troubles to the Vietnam War; this, like the motif of gang rape here and in ''Heaven's Gate,'' appears to have more to do with some larger vision of Mr. Cimino's than with the story at hand. Still, Mr. Rourke manages to be more ingratiating and interesting than Ariane, the model who plays an upscale young newscaster with whom he has an affair. She is so ineffectual a part of the film's framework that she is even upstaged, in a nude scene, by a glimpse of the Brooklyn Bridge.
  Martin D Super Reviewer

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