the audience applauded

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

After the debacle of Heaven's Gate, here is a film where director Michael Cimino was subjected to budgetary restraints. However that was the only thing in which Cimino was restricted because it was certainly not in the use of violence and profanities.Co-written with Oliver Stone who also wrote, Scarface a few years earlier we get a flashy, at times kinetic crime drama with oodles of violence, blood and bad language. Lets also throw in some nudity and use of racial insults as well.Mickey Rourke is a hard nosed cop Captain Stanley White who has been transferred to Chinatown of New York which is in the middle of a gang war and he tries to clean up this gang ridden part of the city whereas the police previously turned a blind eye after being paid off. gangsters.John Lone is the young Triad leader Joey Tai who plans to topple over the old guard ruthlessly and have the drug trade for himself. He even plots with the main drug warlords directly by going over to Thailand. Joey is on a head on collision with White.Year of the Dragon is an ultra violent thriller which arrived in the cinema screens in controversy because of its violence and casual racism. White seems to have little respect for Chinatown due to his experience of Vietnam despite having an affair with a Chinese-American reporter.It is a rough, mean film but also stylish which explores the dark underbelly of Chinatown. I was amazed to find out that little of the film was actually shot in New York, most of the sets were built in North Carolina with some location filming in New York and Bangkok.John Lone gives a magnetic performance as the villain Joey Tai, sick and tired of the old guard and very much in the mould of Tony Montana wanting to reach the top his own way with his henchmen and weapons.Rourke who aged for the role shows sign of promise which unfortunately went off kilter quickly. White is like a bull in a china shop, he has no subtlety part from believing that he is doing right and cleaning up the town. The consequences will be tragic for him.

After about 30 years of knowing about this movie, I finally watched Year of the Dragon. Mickey Rourke is very compelling as the police detective out to rid New York's Chinatown of the various drug trafficking and other corrupt influences there based on his experiences in Vietnam. John Lone is the young crime boss who's trying to keep his head above water in his businesses. This was a mostly compelling action drama about two men raising the stakes in their respective territories. Rourke has a wife (Caroline Kava) he doesn't spend enough time with and carries on an affair with a Chinese-American reporter (Ariane) who knows he's not the most stable guy. To tell the truth, I wasn't too thrilled with their affair but that's the only minus with me. Otherwise, fine performances with fine writing by Oliver Stone and Michael Cimino. Fine direction by the latter as well. So I highly recommend Year of the Dragon. Oh, and I also liked the ending credit sequence with that singer from earlier in the movie.

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.

From Michael Cimino Director of Fine American Classics of Cinema 'Thunderbolt & Lightfoot', The Deer Hunter & 'Heavens Gate' comes 'The Year Of The Dragon' Mickey Rourke is Police Captain Stanley White a Polish American and a Vietnam War veteran assigned to New York City's Chinatown, where he vows to come down hard on Chinese organised crime. Rourke becomes embroiled with Joey Tai John Lone, who ruthlessly rises to the top of the brutal Triad societies. The film has excellent Cinematography courtesy of Alex Thomson, which juxtaposes the two warring cultures, 'The Year Of The Dragon' & it's star Mickey Rourke are nothing short of excellent. I hope that this film may long continue to become further recognised as an American Classic of Noir.