“This is not the Bronx or Brooklyn… it’s not even New York… it’s Chinatown, White… it can be very easy or it can be very hard.” This is John Lone’s slick and eloquently evil Chinese Triad boss, Joey Tai. It is his attempt to bribe Mickey Rourke’s incorruptible and highly decorated NYPD captain, Stanley White. He is a Polish-American; he is Brooklyn born and bred; he is a Vietnam War veteran; he is hard-boiled; and he is a racist.
Year of the Dragon is a visually striking, character-driven, intricately plotted and grittily intense crime thriller, drenched in a rich neo-noir atmosphere. It is the fourth feature directed by dynamic Italian-American filmmaker, Michael Cimino (1939 – 2016). He co-wrote it with Oliver Stone, who is a Nam vet himself. It is an adaptation of the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Daley, who is a former Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Police Department. It is produced by the legendary Hollywood mogul, Dino De Laurentiis (1919 – 2010).
This was Michael Cimino’s first time in the director’s chair since the critical and box-office disaster of his sprawling epic western, Heaven’s Gate (1980). He was given carte blanche on its production, because of the phenomenal success of his Vietnam War drama, The Deer Hunter (1978), which was a five-time Academy Awards winner, including Best Picture and Best Director. Heaven’s Gate went way over budget and schedule. The 149-minute re-edit released in 1981, effectively destroyed its financial backers and distributors, United Artists. It sounded the death knell of New Hollywood – director-driven productions with creative freedom and little studio interference. Cimino’s reputation was forever tainted, so he had to make do with what work he could get, and he worked on many projects that were never realized. However, Heaven’s Gate has enjoyed a startling critical reappraisal. The restored 216-minute director’s cut released in 2012 is recognized as one of the greatest films ever made.
Yet, Year of the Dragon remains grossly underrated in Michael Cimino’s short 7-feature filmography. Prominent film critics had sharpened their claws for the filmmaker because of the Heaven’s Gate debacle. And the controversy surrounding Year of the Dragon, due to the misconception of its themes, hurt its chances of becoming a smash hit. It was just a modest worldwide success with $30.4 million on an estimated $24 million budget. It was a domestic flop with a little under $19 million of the gross. It did little to restore the studios’ faith in its director. But it is the most notable of his work that followed his first three movies. The first of which was the crime comedy, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). After the catastrophe of Cimino’s deeply personal Heaven’s Gate, he was no longer in the position to choose passion projects. He thought he would never get the opportunity to direct again, as did others. He was full of piss and vinegar here: he was determined to prove himself with this genre picture as an assignment gig, and he is at the peak of his filmmaking powers. It is not a compromised vision, aside from the last line of dialogue in the final scene. On this occasion, he made sure to complete the film on time and on budget.
Film critics subjected Year of the Dragon to cultural criticism, due to their perception of defamatory Chinese stereotypes and pervasive xenophobia. This drew indignation from the Chinese-American and wider Asian-American communities, which led to some protesting against the film by picketing outside theatres where it was showing. It resulted in a media shitstorm. The word here is ‘context’. Year of the Dragon is not only an examination of organised crime, but it is also a raw and realistic documentation of ethnicity and racism. We learn of the marginalization of Chinese people in American history, through positive Chinese characters who call out racism for the repugnancy it is. We see an accurate depiction of the Triads exploiting their own race. It is a searing critique on post-Vietnam War anxieties continuing from The Deer Hunter. A film can be about racism, and not be racist, and Year of the Dragon has a clear sense of morality.
Michael Cimino observes the emotional intensity that comes from flawed human behaviour in times of significant stress and tragedy in his films. How the characters live, their internal conflicts, their relationships, their interactions, and their actions – shapes the narrative of Year of the Dragon.
The story is seen through the perspective of the deeply flawed, hard as nails, and obsessive cop anti-hero, Stanley White. He is not an entirely sympathetic character, but his actions are honourable. He is self-centred, he is arrogant, he is obnoxious, he is crass, he is abrasive, he is irascible, and he is overtly racist, for which he has a redemptive arc. He is good at his job, in his single-minded determination to stop the drug trade, other illegal rackets, and violence that plagues innocent citizens. He will stop at nothing in his manic pursuit to get the bad guy who causes misery for innocent people. He tears through Chinatown, rampaging through its criminal underworld, hell-bent on crushing it. However, this has consequences.
Stanley has a self-destructive nature. He is haunted, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and he is a relic of a lost war he is still fighting. Oliver Stone’s theory is that Vietnam veterans who are now police officers are still fighting the war on the streets of America. 15 years after Stanley returned from Nam, he is assigned to Chinatown to clear up the violence by his chief, Lou Bukowski (Raymond J. Barry). Stanley is determined to destroy the Triads, and he will stop at nothing to make sure he wins this time, no matter the cost. He puts his career at risk, his life on the line, and he does not understand why others are not willing to do the same. He does not listen to everyone around him, and he puts their lives in danger. He cannot see the potential fallout until it actually happens, and he pays the price for his relentless crusade. Even then, he does not stop, and the result will largely be the same as it was in Vietnam. He needs this turmoil in his life, because it is all he knows, he does not know how to live any other way, and it is what he lives for. The NYPD top brass will not allow him to do the sole thing he is good at, when they order him to lay off Joey Tai, due to his financial ties and political connections. Stanley says to Lou, “This is a fucking war and I’m not gonna lose it, not this one. Not over politics, it’s always fucking politics! This is Vietnam all over again. Nobody wants to win this thing.”
Stanley has pre-conceived ideas about Asians due to his experiences in the Vietnam War. He looks at them as one race. He says to his love interest, the Chinese-American, Tracy Tzu (Ariane Koizumi), when referring to Nam, “We lost because you were smarter than us.” He just sees the Viet Cong. Like them, the Triads are smart. Stanley says to Lou, “The fact we don’t have one single bust against one of these guys tells me something: they’re smart, Lou, they’re smarter than you are …”. The seemingly omnipotent US military greatly underestimated the Viet Cong. They lacked the firepower, but they countered with guerrilla tactics, including ambushes, booby traps, and vanishing by blending into the general population. In Year of the Dragon, the Triads in Chinatown have always been able to manage their criminal activities undetected, because they pose as legit businessmen. This secret society of Chinese crime syndicates has existed in the United States since the 19th century, when the Chinese community was essentially left to govern itself. Therefore, the Triads filled this vacuum and exploited their own people. They commit extortion, fraud, gambling, money laundering, human trafficking, prostitution, they run sweatshops for counterfeiting goods, and, as Stanley points out, they are “the biggest overall importers of heroin in this country.”
In the same scene, Lou says to Stanley, “At least I didn’t change my name, Wizynski.” Stanley then turns around in the swivel chair he is sitting in, he looks out the window, and he touches his tiepin – a Marine Corps emblem. Director Michael Cimino then focuses on a full-mast United States flag outside the building. Stanley changing his Polish surname to the Americanized ‘White’ is the American Dream rubbing off his Polish identity. His Marine Corps emblem and the Stars and Stripes symbolize his disillusion with it due to the heavy loss in Vietnam. Lou then says in a mocking tone, “Whaddya you want? You want to attack Chinatown with the 82nd Airborne? You’re not in Vietnam here, Stanley.” American military leaders responded to the Viet Cong’s guerrilla tactics by having planes bomb their positions. They used napalm to kill in large numbers and destroy their supply lines. They used Agent Orange that turned farmland and forest into wasteland to force them out into the open for combat, and to crush their morale, so they would surrender. Again, the US military misjudged the Viet Cong. This time it was their strength, stamina, resolve, and support. Stanley then turns back around and says, “There the difference was I never saw the Goddamn enemy. Here they’re right in front of my eyes. They got no place to hide, no jungle.”
Love triangles are a common theme in Michael Cimino’s work. Stanley’s marriage to Connie (Caroline Kava) is falling apart, because she has long suffered his neglect due to his workaholic personality. This drives Stanley to start an affair with Tracy. The purpose of this sub-plot is to illustrate Stanley’s self-destructiveness, as we watch his and Connie’s relationship collapse under the weight of his actions since taking command of Chinatown. It is one of the casualties in his personal war. It builds up to one of Cimino’s trademarks – quiet moments ruptured with abrupt violence. This is skilfully staged and executed. Mickey Rourke’s use of a Desert Eagle handgun is the first to be captured on film.
Tracy is a young, smart, ambitious and driven, and assertive TV news reporter. As she is eager to advance her career, Stanley enlists her to cover the Triads in Chinatown. He provides her with information, so she can do an exposé on the Triads’ rackets, and the bosses that run these. As she is Chinese herself, it will not come across as racist. Tracy is feisty, so she does not put up with Stanley’s antagonistic nature, which makes for a rocky romance.
Stanley’s shell is a colossal prick, but deep, deep, deep down he is a compassionate and emotional soul. When Stanley is intimate with Tracy, he confides in her, and he expresses his vulnerabilities. This is something Mickey Rourke has always been able to convey so effortlessly. It is an integral part in Stanley’s redemption arc of him becoming racially tolerant.
Rourke gives a passionate and intensely physical performance that is compelling. The at the time 32-year-old actor had to age up to play a character who is ten to fifteen years older than him, so he dyed his hair grey, which gives him a neat middle-aged silver fox look. His wardrobe drips of cinematic detective cool.
Every great protagonist needs a great antagonist. Joey Tai is Stanley White’s polar opposite – he is intelligent, classy and smooth. His manipulative and heinous acts show him to be the vicious mobster he truly is. Joey is extremely ambitious, and he seizes power with cunning and ruthless aggression. He pulls the strings behind the backs of the transnational organised crime bosses that run Chinatown. These are an older and more conservative generation of Triads, who follow the tradition from the old country. In the inciting incident, Joey has the aging head of the tong, his father-in-law, assassinated. This takes place in Chinatown, during the celebratory festivities of the Chinese New Year – the ‘Year of the Dragon’. It marks the beginning of Joey’s reign of terror. As his profile rises, he draws attention to the Triads’ activities. The actions of both Joey and Stanley bring them into direct conflict with each other, which escalates quickly, as every time they clash it gets more and more personal.
Joey exploits a Chinese youth gang by getting them to do his dirty work. He uses them to help him usurp his elders and to help him muscle the Italian mafia out of Canal Street. This is the reason why Stanley is reassigned to Chinatown. Michael Cimino strives for authenticity by using his influence of Italian neorealism with non-professional actors for the supporting roles of the gang.
Tracy is a positive Asian character as a successful professional. This is in contrast to the Chinese gangsters. The American born Dutch-Japanese model, Ariane Koizumi, was the victim of a critical mauling for her performance. This was unnecessarily cruel, and it nipped her acting career in the bud. It is not award worthy acting, but she commits to the role. She does fine with a sincere portrayal considering: how young she was at the time (21 years); that she had no previous acting experience; and she was thrown in at the deep end in a lead role on a major Hollywood production. This is particularly in the aftermath of Tracy’s gang rape by Chinese street punks, in which Koizumi conveys pain and anguish convincingly. Stanley inadvertently caused this due to his war on Joey. After Tracy is sexually assaulted, during an intimate confrontation between her and Stanley, Koizumi gives it her all when Stanley pushes Tracy too far, as she breaks down, and she puts him in his place.
It is not the first time Stanley is rendered speechless. He derides the native Chinese man, Herbert Kwong (Dennis Dun), who is a young and inexperienced trainee cop. Stanley has him go undercover to infiltrate the Triads, because nobody will know him. Herbert is unwilling to pose as a busboy in Joey’s restaurant front, to plant a tap in his office. Stanley makes a racist joke about Herbert’s ancestors that built the railroads in America, about how they used to hang in baskets in the Sierras and poke dynamite sticks in cliff faces. Stanley says they would be rolling in their graves over Herbert’s refusal to do what he asks. Herbert becomes agitated, because he is exhausted from working 24/7 with not much sleep, and he has had to put up with weeks of Stanley constantly pushing him. He has had enough, and he stands up to him.
Herbert’s great monologue shuts Stanley up:
“I’m no slave!
When your ancestors were living in caves and scrabbling for coal in Poland, the Chinese were sailing the ships across the Pacific.
We were traders, shipbuilders, explorers. We taught you agriculture, we gave you the orange, the grape, your irrigation system. We dug your gold and silver, Stanley. We taught you how to fish the Pacific. And still we were barred from American citizenship until 1943. We worked so hard to build your railroads. And when our opium didn’t come on time we were so desperate we helped each other kill ourselves. But I’m not going to kill myself for you, Captain White. No more Chinaman Joe. Those days are over.”
Stanley then respects Herbert. It is another part of Stanley’s redemption arc, to him becoming racially tolerant. Herbert is the Chinese viewers’ surrogate, and he deserves their applause.
Stanley invites Tracy to dinner at a restaurant owned by Joey’s uncle. Tracy tells Stanley about her great grandfather who came to America to work on the railroads, and then he went back to China. She tells him about her grandfather who worked the goldmines in America, and then he went back. She says this is because the law would not allow their wives to come over. She tells him that her father was able to settle in America in the 1940s. Stanley has been brushing up on Chinese history in America by reading a book on the subject. He tells her what he has learned about how thousands of Chinese workers died building the railroads. He says that their bones are scattered all over the west, and their identities are unknown. He shows her a photograph of when the Union and the Central Pacific first met at Promontory Point, Utah, upon the completion of the transcontinental railroad, on May 10th 1869. Only the bosses, the politicians, the bankers, and the Irish workman can be seen. There is not one Chinese worker, because they were not asked to be there. They died anonymously, and it was kept a secret, so not many people know the story. “’Cause no one remembers in this country. No one remembers anything.” This is followed by a blistering and shockingly violent shoot-out in the restaurant.
Even though Michael Cimino was given final cut, he was still forced to change the last piece of dialogue. Oliver Stone’s line for Stanley as he embraces Tracy reads, “You know you fight a war long enough sometimes you end up marrying the enemy.” The producers deemed it politically incorrect and unacceptable. As previously stated, Stone is a Vietnam War veteran. And he is married to an Asian woman, who is South Korean. It is not in the finished film, but Stanley’s dialogue leading up to this line in the final draft of the screenplay reads, “I think the war’s over.” Stanley has survived the war and he has finally accepted it is over, and he rejects his racial intolerance. This completes his redemption arc for a poetic ending. Unfortunately, Cimino had to piece words together from Mickey Rourke’s earlier dialogue. He dubbed him over with, “You know you were right I was wrong I’m sorry. I’d like to be a nice guy, I would, I just don’t know how to be nice.” This makes no sense, because it misses the point of the film’s message, which is perfectly summed up in the originally intended line.
Guided by Michael Cimino’s ever-artistic eye, cinematographer Alex Thomson (1929 – 2007, Death Line, 1972, Excalibur, 1981, Legend, 1985, Alien 3, 1992) provides flamboyant visual interest in every frame. The camera courses through the streets on cranes, dollies, and tracks. There are sweeping views of the sets and locations, which are captured in an anamorphic presentation. In the interior dialogue scenes, the camera pivots to take everything in before it settles to stress the drama. Thomson’s vibrant and complex colour palette brings Chinatown vividly to life in all of its extensive detail. There are beautiful shots of Northern Thailand’s landscapes in the film’s final third.
It would be understandable if you mistook the Chinatown setting as the real location. These are thoroughly researched, meticulously detailed, and ultra-realistic sets, which look lived in, based on native China and Chinatown locales. They were recreated on soundstages in Wilmington, North Carolina. This adheres to accuracy even fooled master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick (1928 – 1999). He was born and raised in the Bronx, not too far from Chinatown, so he must have visited there many times. And he had an acute attention to realism for the large-scale set designs of his films. Cimino had to try to convince Kubrick that what he saw on screen were in fact sets.
“This is not the Bronx or Brooklyn… it’s not even New York… it’s Chinatown …”. Michael Cimino depicts Chinatown almost as if it is a direct extension of mainland China. If it were not for the presence of the “white devil” NYPD, we would believe it is. It is as if it is disconnected from the rest of New York City. We see from the Lower Manhattan side where Chinatown is situated: the lower Manhattan skyline; the Brooklyn Bridge; the Manhattan Bridge; the World Trade Center; and the Empire State Building. This is through the grand panoramic view of Tracy’s spacious, sophisticated, sleek, and sumptuous apartment, which mirrors its owner. The set of the apartment is a converted loft space on the top floor of a factory building between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge, and this view of NYC is unique to film. An exquisite tracking shot follows a half-naked (as in topless) Tracy in her apartment, as she is concealed by the darkness of the place in the blue light of dawn. From the right of the frame, she walks by the view of the luminous Manhattan Bridge. When she sits on cushions on top of a sofa, the camera stops for a long shot of her silhouette against the captivating wide vista of the city skyline and the brightly lit Brooklyn Bridge. This symbolizes the ‘bridging’ of the divide, as we see New York in the far distance.
Heaven’s Gate composer David Mansfield’s soundtrack enhances the emotional beats of the story. His tranquil classical guitar piece, Separation Fight, is reminiscent of British composer Stanley Myers’ Cavatina. This was written for Eric Till’s crime drama, The Walking Stick (1970), and eight years later, Michael Cimino would popularize it, as he used it as the theme for The Deer Hunter. Mansfield’s spine-tingling, dark and haunting main theme for Year of the Dragon uses orchestral and Oriental instrumentations.
Non-diegetic music is not used for the action sequences, which adds to their gritty realism, as they focus on the harsh and unpleasant realities of violence. There are four of these deftly staged and executed, intensely taut, blood-soaked, and stunning set-pieces spread out over the film’s 134-minute runtime. They serve the plot, so it is not gratuitous violence. Two of these are highly memorable. Stanley beats up Joey in his nightclub front, captured by Cimino’s signature shaky tracking shots, and it is electrifying. It is accompanied by the diegetic music playing in the club, the banging electro track, Uphill (Peace of Mind) by C.O.D., which perfectly captures the synth sound of the era. This is followed immediately by an exhilarating chase shoot-out when Stanley exchanges fire with two Asian female gang members as he pursues them outside. The gripping climax of the night-time showdown between Stanley and Joey is unforgettable, as they shoot it out Western-style on railroad tracks near a shipping port, while the fog machines work overtime for an atmospheric background effect. As famed cult filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said, “You forget to breathe during it!”
Year of the Dragon has deservedly gained a cult following. It is an immersive, riveting, daring, and hard-edged neo-noir crime thriller, with a deeper human story. It demonstrates that director Michael Cimino still had his gift for powerful, thought-provoking, and elegant filmmaking. This is war on the streets. As the tagline says, “It isn’t the Bronx or Brooklyn, it isn’t even New York. It’s Chinatown… and it’s about to explode.”
Note: Imprint’s 2024 Blu-ray re-release of Year of the Dragon is currently the best way to watch the film at home. The special features include an audio commentary by Michael Cimino from the 2005 DVD release.
