Year of the Dragon

About This Movie

Director Michael Cimino turned Year of the Dragon, an engrossing novel by Robert Daley, into a confused, overlong, preachy, and at times downright annoying crime epic with a wholly unsympathetic main character played by the totally miscast Mickey Rourke. Stanley White is a Vietnam vet who has become the most-decorated police officer in New York City's history. When a prominent businessman-mob leader in Chinatown is assassinated by a member of a Chinese youth gang, White is assigned to Chinatown and ordered to clean up the gang problem. It is soon apparent to White that the teenage hoodlums are under the control of an ambitious young heroin kingpin, Joey Tai. Enlisting the help of a pretty young Chinese-American television reporter, Tracy Tzu, White becomes obsessed with destroying Tai and goes after the suave criminal with both barrels blazing. Year of the Dragon is a mess. There is an amazing amount of sloppiness in the script and characterizations. Of the principal actors only Lone registers strongly as the cool young Chinese crime lord, and it is ironic that his character is the most interesting and sympathetic. All of this is very unfortunate, for there is a good movie buried somewhere in Year of the Dragon, but it barely has a chance to come up for air.

Cast and Crew