Year of the Dragon

Cimino cranking out a movie that isn’t a week long and actually possible to follow again. Rourke dragging a flaming corpse out of an exploded car screaming it’s evidence. Rourke used to look like us humans once upon a time. Rourke.

Seemed to be kinda cool, until the constant racist and misogynist bullshit drained all the entertainment out of it for me. Rourke's casting is spot-on but his character is just so, so horrible.

Was somewhat disappointed - the pacing seemed off, and the way the women were treated fit the character but not the film as a whole (killing one off to justify his being with another; is it a requirement to have Rourke with a nude woman in every one of his films?). But Rourke's performance was outstanding, and the end scene on the train tracks was amazing, despite (and perhaps because of) its blatant homage to The Third Man.

Solid film. The ending was great but I thought the denouement was a bit much. Other than that I have no major complaints: the script crackles, Rourke is on point and the supporting cast all back it up.

Very predictable and Rourke is a caricature but it's great to look at (that loft apartment is up there with Gordon Gekko's office for iconic 80's spaces).

There's some weird ass politics flowing under this that I'm not in the mood to analyze, but maybe that's just the mid 80s for you. It's a really good film either way. A cop/mafia film that builds slowly but steadily with good performances and feels more brisk than its runtime, and director, would indicate.

Given Cimino's tendency towards sprawl, Y.O.T.D plays like a truncated version of a much longer film even though it probably isn't. The narrative threads don't cohere seamlessly, and some of the acting is unfortunate (re: Ariane), but there is plenty to admire in this culture clash crime drama. The complex camera movements through streets and offices are very impressive, the violence is genuinely jolting, and Rourke gives an arguably career best performance as a conflicted cop.

Year of the Dragon has all the cliches of the hard-boiled crime film, but it just has so much more. Oliver Stone's script, which rivals Midnight Express as his best, is so slick that it can afford to go over-the-top with gusto and still has you going. Cimino never directed something so intense, rapidly paced and visually arresting before or since, and it's the crowning achievement of Rourke as an actor. At once colorful and pitch black, an exhilarating movie.

Any other director would have made this a cookie-cutter cop thriller. Michael Cimino is not a director I feel I understand very well yet but he is always interesting. There are some notable stylistic similarities to the Deer Hunter here, not the least of which is the score. Mickey Rourke is in top form, as he almost always is, and once again proves himself to be among the greatest screen actors of our time. I think this is an underrated film that tries to stretch the limits of its genre.

Heavy-handed and rather terrible in so many ways. Still there is something stylish about the whole mess - and Rourke is pretty good.

This movie went on a lot longer than I expected, especially in the middle with the trip to SE Asia. Chinatown always provides a nice change of atmosphere in crime movies. Would have liked an Asian lead. They really wanted to wrap up the wife storyline, didn't they? Female reporter sleeping with story subject trope. The Chinese characters were relatively caricature free. John Lone MVP. Fav scene: Herbert getting tragically killed (again, after another long character-wrapping speech).

Michael Cimino #2

Beautiful but madcap attempt to address two big questions -- what makes an American? and how has Vietnam destroyed America?

modefilm med modeskuespillere - har vi de rette skuespillere behøver vi sgu ikke ave en ordenlig film...

In overcoming some pretty substantial narrative and dialogue problems, it attains (or at least resembles) greatness thanks to Cimino's audiovisual touches and Mickey Rourke's performance.

On first viewing in 2014, the energy and craziness of this crime melodrama created an impression. Re-watching in 2021, the flaws seem more significant than the virtues, and the whole thing is just too messy. Cimino has a strange ability to conjure emotion out of weak elements, and he can always create some effective image compositions and camera movements, but in this case he transcends neither the material nor his own obsessions. Still, the racial and sexual elements are not without interest.

Not good, but a film with some really unusual virtues. Great performance by Rourke

Very similar to another film Stone wrote--Scarface, only this one has cool Mickey Rourke and sparkly Chinatown instead of loud Al Pacino and garish Miami.

62.000

This is cheesy 80's action entertainment with some drama thrown in. Great soundtrack and cinematography throughout bump the movie up a couple notches.

Cimino's desire for an epic that describes the racism and brutality of America was always bigger than his talent for holding it together, and while the set design is again formidable, everything else is a weirdly fabricated mess of gang warfare. Worst of all is Rourke's casting and the ash-grey dye job they did on him in order to fill a role that was written fifteen years older.

Mickey Rourke is superb. Another 80's classic.