Year of the Dragon (1985)

As hard as it is to believe, when I went on my well-documented rant against that most horrid of movie years - 1985 - there was one movie that I neglected to mention, in spite of the many many godawful movies I railed against. And equally hard to believe, it was directed by Michael Cimino.

I know, I know...but before we go any further, let's just forget for a moment what year this came out in and focus instead on another, important, topic:

Why do so many people bear ill will against Michael Cimino?

Is it because of the excesses and ego he indulged while shooting Heaven's Gate? Because of the resentment that Hollywood held against him for helping destroy a once-proud studio (United Artists)? Because no matter what Cimino does, he'll never lose the stigma of being an overbearing egocentric whose accolades will always be overshadowed by his damnations?

Well, yeah.

But five years after the initial release of Gate, Hollywood was willing to give him a chance to redeem himself and let Cimino again direct a major release. And oddly enough, it was again MGM/UA who gave him his next film opportunity. Maybe it was part of a contract deal. Anyway....

With Year of the Dragon, Cimino was able to film the kind of dramatic, highly-charged story that would hopefully return him to the favorable light of his peers.

Needless to say, it didn't work...but it should have.

Yes, don't fall out of your chair - I liked this movie. Baby, did I blow your mind?

The plot is simple enough: decorated New York officer Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) is made responsible for the policing of New York's Chinatown, this in spite of his hate for Asians since fighting in Vietnam. He is almost immediately brought into conflict with Joey Tai (Jone Lone), newly appointed boss of New York's Chinese Mafia. In their battle to end each other's interferences, rules are broken, violence upon violence is matched and blood is spilled heavily on both sides.

Say what you will about Michael Cimino, but the man is an artist. He can lens beautiful scenes, film violent shootouts on an epic scale and make even a mundane conversation look grand and majestic. He is a good director; and when he doesn't let his inflated opinion of himself get in the way, can make a good movie (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Deer Hunter). The bright, sharp days and impenetrable nights, accented with neon, fireworks and flashes of gunfire, silhouetted figures and conflicted heroes (and villains) give you the impression that director Cimino is indeed enjoying what he does.

The story itself is a perfect vehicle for Cimino to shoot explosions, shootouts, violent confrontations and the like. Based on a novel by Robert Daley (who also wrote the book that later became Treat Williams' Prince of the City, another great film) and co-scripted by Cimino and no less than Oliver Stone (!), such topics of racism, pride, greed, crippling anger and vengeance are touched on, more or less effectively.

The acting suits the material. Mickey Rourke can act; he proved as much in his early days in films like Body Heat, Diner and The Pope of Greenwich Village. As a shell-shocked veteran who fights his own demons along with the normal thugs of the street, Rourke modulates White as a regular man who does what he has to and a racist with such deep-seeded pain and anger against Asians that it's all he can do to step into Chinatown, much less police it.

John Lone's turn as the vile, manipulative Joey Tai is good, but perhaps harder to appreciate. Here is a man who has effectively portrayed a caveman (Iceman), deposed emperor (The Last Emperor) and a female impersonator (M. Butterfly) - how hard could it be to play a bad guy gangster?

But think about it; Tai is a man who must go against generations of rules within the Chinese Mafia to make his own mark, earn them more money in opium sales no matter what. And with White thwarting his every move, Tai becomes increasingly more desperate to prove himself before his own bosses have him killed. He starts out supremely confident, but doesn't reckon on meeting someone as single-minded and driven as he. Lone meets all the nuances of a man out not just for supremacy, but also for survival.

You may be asking yourself; if this is such a great movie, how come I've never heard of it? That's a tough one - there was still so much of a backlash against Cimino for all that Heaven's Gate business that no matter how good he does after the fact, it will all be for naught. Motion pictures are a fickle business. If you make bad decisions at the cost of an entire studio, it's hard to regain the confidence of the world once they've already seen you go down in flames.

Year of the Dragon didn't make the splash that MGM/UA hoped (not even making back 1/4 of its $24 million budget...surprised?) and Cimino's career suffered another major setback. It's still not clear if, under different circumstances, this movie would have done better.

A different director? Perhaps. Sam Peckinpah would have done wonders with this, and probably would have been the only other director who could have done the job necessary. Maybe Oliver Stone could have directed his own script and charged out of the gate with high octane like he did in Natural Born Killers and U-Turn.

But then would anyone other than Cimino (in top form, admittedly) have the bravado to shoot a film such as this; one so audaciously explosive, racially charged and chock-full of opportunities for actors the likes of Rourke and Lone to gnash at the scenery as they do? Again, perhaps.

But would it have been as outrageously enjoyable? Probably not.

It took a long time for it to happen, but there are finally defenders out there who believe Heaven's Gate is an unsung Marxist Western masterpiece whose elegance and beauty can only now be appreciated. Maybe if we wait a few more years down the road, the same thing will happen for Year of the Dragon, which truly does deserve a second chance.

Of course, in theory, the same thing may have to happen with Cimino's remake of Desperate Hours.

If it's all the same to you, I'd rather chase The Dragon.