YEAR OF THE DRAGON: Blu-ray (MGM/UA, 1985) Warner Archive

Michael Cimino’s career, post Heaven’s Gate (1980) was ill-served. One might suggest that Cimino had administered the fatal kill shot with his big and bloated western saga that failed to generate anything but a whimper among audiences, and, garnering thorough dismissal from the critics.  After it sunk the venerable United Artists, Heaven’s Gate garnered the ever-lasting – if unfairly judged - reputation for being the biggest turkey of all time. In reality, Heaven’s Gate was none of those things, though it could hardly be considered a classic to rival the reputation of Hollywood’s beloved, Gone with The Wind, albeit, as a western. This had been Cimino’s driving ambition during production. In the wake of Heaven’s Gate and its fallout, fingers were aggressively pointed at Cimino for his profligate spending; also, the way he had thoroughly soured UA’s good will, by insisting on freakish control over every aspect of its creation – to the point, where UA was caught in a catch-22, simply writing check after check, while mercilessly praying for a smash hit. It is telling of the Hiroshima-sized crater left in the wake of Cimino’s epic that no one in Hollywood would even look upon him to helm another movie. Indeed, Cimino did not work in the biz for another 5 years, but when he did re-emerge on the screen, it was decidedly a scaled-down affair.
Loosely based on Robert Daley’s novel, Year of the Dragon (1985) is a fairly straight-forward crime drama, curiously set in an undisclosed ‘present’ with a prematurely grayed, Mickey Rourke as Capt. Stanley White, attired like a Bogart-styled gumshoe from the 1940’s. Stanley has been assigned to investigate gang warfare in New York’s Chinatown district. His first line of defense is to launch into a full-scale war on the Chinese community at large, Asians of every denomination, blanketly referenced throughout the picture as ‘yellow-skinned niggers’, ‘gooks’, ‘chinks’ and virtually every other derogatory slur one can imagine. The effect wears thin, and before long, becomes not only grotesquely prejudicial, but also perversely transparent in its attempts at shock value. The screenplay by Cimino and Oliver Stone – prior to Stone’s debut in the director’s chair, seemed to promise some good things along the way or ‘yet to come’; that and the fact, Dino De Laurentiis (no stranger to producing some hefty spectacles in his heyday and few weighty turkeys too) is its producer. But Year of the Dragon is sloppily stitched together from a few of the more nightmarish chapters in Daley’s novel, augmented by a lot of overtly gruesome bloodshed, and some of the least prepossessing exposition heard in any movie yet – not just one made at the height of the whack-tac-u-lar eighties.
The first hurdle to overcome is casting. Despite Cimino hoping for – and getting – Mickey Rourke to star as the hard-bitten realist/cop, Rourke’s performance in Year of the Dragon is about as uninspired as watching fresh paint cure. He is at his best when admonishing his superior, Lou Bukowski (Ray Barry), or throwing off pithy one-liners to insult the Chinese mafia on their own turf. Yeah, ballsy. But did anyone even bother to teach Rourke how to handle a gun? As a veteran of Nam and a decorated officer of the law – Stanley’s chosen profession, Rourke should have more sense than to blindly fire his service revolver into a fleeing crowd, hoping against hope he will hit his target before he wounds or even kills a few civilians.  Worse, at intervals Rourke seems to be reading his lines from cue cards MacTac’ed to his forehead, or posted just out of camera range, with a perpetual smugness that an actor like Bruce Willis could have convincingly pull off as legit. And Rourke is, arguably, the strongest talent in the line-up. John Lone, who would distinguish himself admirably in Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) is woefully miscast as Joey Tai, the presumed head of a crime syndicate, destined to end very badly for him. Lone, whose fine-boned features make him a stunningly handsome edition to the cast, also give him an air of unintentional ‘leading man’ tenderness, counterintuitive to his ‘tough-as-nails’ gangland kingpin, who hurls the severed head of a competitor across a crowded table to impress his arch nemesis.
Ariane Koizumi, as ambitious TV reporter, Tracy Tzu (and billed in the credits, only as Ariane) is the absolute worst of the leads. Like Lone, Ariane was likely cast for her Asian heritage. She looks the part. Whether appearing in expensive fur or her birthday suit, Ariane is veritable eye candy. Were that she could act her way out of a paper bag. The last bit of bad casting goes to Caroline Kava as Stanley’s significant other; nurse practitioner with an attitude, Connie White. I’ve enjoyed Kava’s acting before. And I suppose I might have here, if only she did not look more like Stanley’s mother than his wife. How Rourke’s emotionally guarded gunslinger with a badge could even think to work up his winter passion for Kava’s tart-mouthed frump, dashing off to work in her white orthopedic Oxfords after she basically told him to ‘screw off’ and fix the dishwasher, is frankly a minor miracle. Connie’s death comes near the end of Stanley’s unquenchable desire to decimate the Chinese crime syndicate, and, Rourke’s shedding of tears at her funeral, if sophomoric at best, nevertheless, seem genuine; Kava – as the corpse – holding her breath and beaded rosary inside an open casket. This leaves the heavy-lifting up to Dennis Dun, as Herbert Kwong; the cop-in-training that Stanley recruits to get close – too close, in fact – to the family dynasty pulling all the puppet strings inside an enterprising and international drug cartel. Dunn’s nervous guy on the side is probably the most credible character here, conveying an edgy determinism to succeed, but as much nerve-jangling anxiety he will wind up another statistic in service to Stanley’s all-consuming passion to shut down the criminal element in Chinatown.
Michael Cimino had been approached several times by Dino De Laurentiis to helm Year of the Dragon – each time, emphatically turning it down. For Cimino, the refusal was likely predicated on his lack of knowledge regarding Chinese gang warfare than any standoffish attitude regarding Year of the Dragon not being ‘his kind’ of movie. After all, beggars can hardly be choosers. And Cimino needed the work. So, delving into Daley’s novel and then copious research, not from books, but by immersing himself in the culture of Chinatown, Cimino signed on to helm the project on one condition – he could do things his way. This ought to have sent a shiver down De Laurentiis’ spine – also, the executive brain trust at MGM – the company, having absorbed UA’s financial debt and back catalog after Cimino’s other debacle, and, now footing his bills yet again. Worse for Cimino, he had agreed to the studio’s terms, unaware at the outset they were already locked in, not only for the picture’s start date, but also its world premiere. Working under the gun, Cimino brought back Joann Carelli – the gal he had made a full-fledged producer on Heaven’s Gate; mostly then, a ceremonial post; Carelli tossed under the proverbial bus on that project after UA’s management finally awakened to the realization it was Cimino who was running his own show then, with Carelli merely running interference between him and the studio.
This time, however, Cimino was serious – or rather, had likely learned a valuable lesson. That if he was ever again to work in Hollywood after Year of the Dragon, it was best to like everyone at the outset and not deliberately try to piss anyone off. Cimino also brought in Oliver Stone to polish the writing.  Cimino had, in fact, been sincerely impressed by Stone’s writing finesse on the, as yet unproduced screenplay, eventually to become the Oscar-winning Platoon (1986). Coaxing Stone to work on Year of the Dragon for less than his usual fee, in exchange for De Laurentiis agreeing to fully fund Stone’s passion project – Platoon, Stone would later regret the trade-off, especially after the luke warm box office on Year of the Dragon caused De Laurentiis to renege on their agreement, forcing Stone to seek his funding for Platoon elsewhere. And De Laurentiis was a wily wheeler dealer in other ways too, giving Cimino his ever-important ‘final cut’ but only if Cimino lived up to virtually all of the other criteria as outlined in his contract. Stone, later to be known for his own directorial fanaticism, would not look upon his time spent on Year of the Dragon with any great fondness. “With Michael, it's a 24-hour day” Stone would later comment, “He doesn't really sleep ... he's truly an obsessive personality. He's the most Napoleonic director I ever worked with.”
As Cimino quickly was to learn, he had been thrown into the deep end of the pool, casting already well underway by this time. Concurring with Stone, Cimino initially preferred Nick Nolte or Jeff Bridges for the part eventually played by Mickey Rourke. Rourke’s impressive turn in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) would convince Cimino otherwise. But the premature aging of Rourke for the part – indeed, he is playing a guy fifteen years his actual senior – seems to have left the actor stumped for any valid characterization. Nevertheless, his $1 million salary ought to have afforded him enough motivation to find his niche; that, and Cimino’s insistence he draw upon his real-life boxing prowess for inspiration, even going so far as to hire a Hell’s Angel to whip Rourke back into shape. Meanwhile, Cimino turned his attention to the sets. As shooting in authentic Chinatown would have proved a logistical nightmare, Cimino had Production Designer, Wolf Kroeger and Art Director, Victoria Paul immerse themselves in vivid recreations, built on sound stages in Wilmington, North Carolina. The sets proved so authentic, when Year of the Dragon premiered, Cimino received a phone call from Stanley Kubrick, offering him kudos for getting such stunningly handsome footage shot ‘on location’. As Kubrick was Bronx-born and well-acquainted with the real Chinatown, Cimino took this as the highest form of praise for his level of authenticity.
Year of the Dragon did, in fact, go on location, to shoot several authentic interiors; notably, Tracy’s apartment, with a breathtaking view of New York’s Hudson and the George Washington Bridge; also, employing various nondescript neighborhoods in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Thailand, Bangkok and Shangirey. Cimino would later explain how his lack of film school-training was actually beneficial. “I didn’t know what I couldn’t do,” he explained, “They would say to me, ‘you can’t do that’ and I’d say ‘why not’ and ‘watch me’. Then, I’d just go ahead and do it and it would come out better than anything they ever thought of.” Indeed, Cimino took great pride in, and was fond of explaining, how a single scene in Year of the Dragon, following Lone’s Chinese mafia chieftain, began in one location, but by the end of Tai’s brief walk through an underground sweat shop, had crossed over six different locations, shot in three different cities without a single flub in continuity from one cut to the next. For the record, the sweat shop was in Bangkok, the guard-rail, in New York, and, the adjacent apartment, in Wilmington. Informed by one of his young script supervisors this scene ‘wouldn't cut’ (edit seamlessly), Cimino bet her $1,000 to the contrary, won the bet, then politely refused to take her money.
As shooting neared its end, Cimino could also take immense pride in the fact he had managed to bring in Year of the Dragon on time and under budget. Still, executives at MGM balked over the penultimate line of dialogue in the movie; a scene where Rourke’s careworn and badly beaten cop is reconciled with Adriane’s toughened up reporter; Stanley commenting, “Well, I guess if you fight a war long enough, you end up marrying the enemy.” Believing the line to be racially insensitive to Asian Americans, Cimino reluctantly agreed to redo the scene, with Stanley coyly offering, “You were right and I was wrong. I'd like to be a nice guy. But I just don't know how to be nice.” Oliver Stone was not pleased with this revision. But he had little to say about it, and would refrain from any more social commentary regarding American/Chinese relations, until his probing drama, Heaven and Earth (1993).  Cimino was decidedly working under the gun to make Year of the Dragon as engrossing a mob movie as any yet played out on the big screen. While numerous templates had already been well-established in American movies regarding the Italian mafia, there were virtually no representations of the Chinese triads. Cimino and MGM encountered several protests, meant to derail the picture from being made; Cimino, explaining how Chinese influence and money had powerful political backing that might have easily tanked the project. “They would back anyone, so no matter who won they had control and could call in their markers.” Although Cimino was encouraged to tread lightly on his representation of triad violence – something the Chinese/American counsel vehemently denied, even suggesting the triads were a myth – Cimino chose instead to imply the influence of the triads was gradually taking over not only Chinatown, but spreading like a cancer into the other boroughs.
From the outset of the plot, Year of the Dragon lays an insidious groundwork that outlined an unspoken law between New York’s NYPD and Chinatown, whereupon the police agreed to remove themselves from administering the law within its boundaries; the Chinese left to rule themselves and micromanage their crime families in a tenuous balance to occasionally erupt in bloodshed among themselves. Year of the Dragon opens with a staged processional and two bloody assassinations; one, a much-lauded chieftain, Jackie Wong (Ming C. Lee) of the crime syndicate, ruthlessly stabbed in the chest as he enjoys his dinner at a local eatery; the other, an Italian shop owner, Lenny Carranza (Tony Lip), who finds his meager dried goods store being encroached upon by youth gangs scrounging for territorial rights. Although Tai’s triad has had an unofficial agreement with the Italian mafia, this break in their détente creates an immediate rift and a vacuum into which Capt. Stanley White finds he is ill-equipped to quash the rivalry without, first, administering his own particular brand of street justice. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Stanley is the proverbial bull the China shop – literally; breaking into an underground illegal gambling parlor and demanding to know the whereabouts of Joey Tai.
At home, Stanley’s nature is hardly restrained. In fact, he has put his marriage repeatedly on the line; invested wholeheartedly in his career, and, resisting his wife, Connie’s long-standing desire to have a child, while professing to still be open to the idea. Connie knows this is just a lie. Stanley will never change. Perhaps, it is time she moved on and found a man who actually wants all the things she does. While Stanley’s reassignment to Chinatown has been predicated on an understanding he will go ‘hardball’ on its youth gangs, he instead elects to aggressively target Joey Tai, the late Jackie’s son-in-law who has since taken over the triad. Chiding Tai and his silver-tongued cohorts, Fred Hung (Pao Han Lin) and Harry Yung (Victor Wong), with a slew of racial slurs to level the playing field, Stanley promises to bring down the wrath of the police if Tai does not comply. In short order, Stanley’s sledgehammer approach lands him in hot water with his superior, Louis Bukowski (Ray Barry). But it wins him a lot of points with the Commissioner, William McKenna (Eddie Jones), who realizes Bukowski’s ‘sidelines’ approach has yet to put a crimp in the tail of the Chinese mafia.
Meanwhile, although Joey has connived his way into the triad elders’ good graces, steadily his brand of ‘vigorous leadership’ will be reviewed as needlessly ratcheting up the ferocity in Chinatown, to the detriment of even its most profitable gambling houses and restaurants. Realizing his ace in the hole must be a Chinese American whose face is unfamiliar to the mob, someone he can plant within their midst to learn the inner details, Stanley recruits neophyte NYPD trainee, Herbert Kwong to go undercover and infiltrate Joey's organization. To further his plan, Stanley also enters into a problematic relationship with Tracy Tzu, an American-born Chinese reporter, working Chinatown for her English language network. Stanley and Tracy are nearly assassinated when Joey employs his youth gang members to send a message at Harry Yung’s fashionable nightclub; Joey, barely able to get off a few rounds as the ballroom is decimated in a hailstorm of bullets. Taking the attack personally, Stanley raises the stakes even further, placing Herbert and Tracy in grave danger.
The following day the Triad elders convene to discuss the bloody coup, each denying responsibility for it. Joey suggests the elders appoint him the acting head of their organization, or face further such assaults from the Nam Soong triads, the Mafia, and, the Vietnamese. His own business in shambles, Yung votes for Joey – a decision seconded by the remaining members. Shortly thereafter, Joey makes his pilgrimage to Bangkok for a prearranged meeting with the mafia. Meanwhile, Stan and Bukowski are given a severe dressing down by Commissioner Sullivan (Mark Hammer) who demands an end to their hard line tactics. We cut to Tai visiting the slum where his hit men reside, discovering it was he who ordered the attack on Yung’s establishment in order to force the elders into accepting his protection as their only alternative. Feigning concern for the two young assassins, one severely wounded in the foot by Stanley, Tai orders the youth gang’s leader, Ronnie Chang (Joey Chin) to murder both boys and dispose of their bodies.  After all, dead men tell no tales.  So, Chang shoots the pair dead, their remains dumped in a vat inside one of the hellish underground sweat shops. As Stanley and Herbert are going over various details, they are informed of the discovery of these corpses. Stanley hurries to the crime scene, meeting with acting officer, Alan Perez (Jack Kehler) who introduces him to Tony Ho (Steve Chen) who has ‘discovered’ the bodies.
Drawing the action just a little too close to home, Stanley invites Connie out to dinner at Joey’s nightclub, virtually ignoring his wife at the bar to engage Joey in a little one-on-one. Joey tries to bribe Stanley with a bit of disposable income for his advancing retirement. Stanley turns it down.  Realizing Stanley’s idea of their ‘dinner out’ was just a ploy to get in Joey’s face, Connie goes home and pitches all of her husband’s possessions onto the front porch. Stanley should be mortified. But actually, he is more nonplussed than anything, departing with his things to take up temporary residence with Tracy in her high-rise apartment.  Applying pressure, charm, and abject pleading for his case, Stanley finds a sympathetic ear. Tracy lets him into her home, heart and bed – the lovable bastard having scored another notch in his grand plan to oust Joey Tai from power. Stanley is ruthless, ordering his men to stage a massive lockdown on any spurious activities in Chinatown. Incensed, the Triad elders begin to lose faith in Joey, turning to mafia boss, Teddy Tedesco (Paul Scaglione) for counsel. In the badinage of thinly veiled threats that follows, Joey and Teddy iron out their tenuous détente, the whole conversation captured for posterity – and a jury to decide – by Herbert, recording everything from across the street.  From this conversation, Stanley and his follower, Rizzo (Leonard Termo) learn Joey is planning to fly to Bangkok.  
Bukowski and Stanley tie one on at a sleezy pool hall/bar; Bulkowski, openly criticizing Stanley for ignoring Connie – the best thing that ever happened to him. In Thailand, Joey meets with White Powder Ma (Fan Mui Sang), chieftain of the Nam Soong gang and a rival distributor of Ban Sung's (Yukio Yamamoto) heroin. Meanwhile, back in New York, Stanley attempts to patch things up with Connie. Regrettably, their one peaceful interlude is interrupted by a home invasion, staged at Joey’s request by Ronnie Cheung. Connie is fatally garroted, but Stanley manages to shoot Cheung’s unidentified accomplice dead. Rizzo appears and helps Stanley make chase; Stanley eventually firing the fatal shot that splits Cheung’s head like an ax, moments before his getaway car careens into a solid cement wall, exploding into a hellish fireball. We return to Thailand. Joey is done playing nice. He enters into negotiations with the drug lord, Ban Sung to buy a purer form of heroin.  Ban Sung resists the offer, claiming it is insignificant to the price he gets from White Powder Ma, to which Joey responds by depositing White Powder Ma’s disembodied head on the table. Back in New York, Stanley mourns the loss of his wife; Tony Ho, appearing at the funeral to offer his sincere condolences.
Meanwhile, at the airport, Tracy confronts Joey to learn the real reason for his trip to Bangkok.  Realizing there is a mole within his organization, Joey is momentarily thrown by Tracy’s questions, but refuses to answer her. Meanwhile, Stanley orders Herbert to go undercover inside Joey’s restaurant and wiretap his office. Herbert refuses. It’s too dangerous. And he will not die to satisfy Stanley’s thirst for revenge. Nevertheless, Herbert does get a job as a lowly bus boy at the restaurant, taping the triad’s conversations. The elders are disgusted with Joey’s recently botched attempt on Stanley’s life. Joey promises them a foreseeable end to all their woes, divulging the name of the ship carrying their heroin supply. The conversation is interrupted by Perez, who informs Joey his offices are bugged. Believing he has escaped the restaurant in the nick of time, Herbert is ruthlessly gunned down by one of Joey’s youth gang recruits; Stanley, arriving just in time to coddle his dying friend in his arms. Crashing Joey’s night out, Stanley pulverizes his nemesis inside one of the bathroom stalls, his full-on assault, breaking Joey’s nose and dunking his head in the toilet, interrupted by another of Joey’s youth gang recruits, Red Hair (Doreen Chen), who attempts to shoot Stanley. She wounds him in the neck. But Stanley makes chase through the nightclub and out onto the streets, gunning down Red Hair in the middle of oncoming traffic. Alas, Stanley is too late to spare Tracy, who is followed home by a trio of Joey’s men, attacked and raped at knife point. At daybreak, Joey meets with the elders for the last time. He will personally collect the heroin shipment to ensure their prosperity.
Learning of Tracy’s rape, Stanley vows to murder Joey. That evening, despite having been relieved of his duties, Stanley makes good on his promise, tailing Joey and Perez to the pier. Knowing Perez is the mole responsible for Herbert’s death, Stanley easily dispatches with him. The car flips over and Joey is forced to flee on foot. Getting into another car, he dares an escape across a trestle with an oncoming train headed in his direction. In desperation, Joey puts the car in reverse, coming in Stanley’s direct line of fire.  Having escaped the train, Joey and Stanley engage in a bizarre joust, charging at one another, guns blazing. Stanley is the better shot, and proves it by riddling his competition in bullets. As Joey slumps to the ground, Stanley spares his life. Instead, Joey asks for Stanley’s gun, committing suicide moments before the police arrive to arrest him. We return to Chinatown, another funeral procession – Joey Tai, immortalized under the watchful eye of the new administration. Despite having no jurisdiction, Stanley arrives on the scene, creating a disturbance that delays Joey’s cortege from continuing down the avenue. He demands that every last one of the participants and pallbearers be arrested. In the ensuing ruckus, Stanley and Tracy are reunited. She thinks him crazier than ever, but cannot resist his inimitable ‘bad boy’ charm. The two reconciled lovers walk off together, leaving the police to clean up Chinatown…maybe.
Year of the Dragon would be a worthy crime thriller if not for its pedestrian dialogue sandwiched between feebly strung together action sequences. Cimino makes up a lot of mileage in the latter half of the story, beginning with Joey’s big reveal of White Powder Ma’s severed head, right up until the climactic showdown between Joey and Stanley on the railroad tracks at the pier. But the first two-thirds of the movie are an interminable display of seemingly disjointed vignettes – one rudimentary scene of exposition, book-ended by two grotesquely graphic scenes of thought-numbing viciousness, mostly involving a lot of Red Dye #9 being indiscriminately spilled in gallon quantities all over the set. Cimino is obviously going for broke here – his investment in bloody carnage preceding, and arguably, outclassing even Quentin Tarantino’s directorial verve for graphically illustrating murder and other inhumane cruelties by nearly 7 years (Reservoir Dogs, 1992). Not surprisingly, Tarantino is a huge fan of Year of the Dragon. Screen violence is often the barometer by which permissible acts are measured against the norm and Hollywood’s own ratings system, designed to delay more impressionable young minds from being exposed to such gratuitous nightmares.  
Miraculously, Year of the Dragon did not receive an ‘R’, but a PG-13. Given its racially loaded content – there are enough ‘yellow-skinned’ slurs for six contemporary action flicks – and, an even rawer penchant for finding new ways to bludgeon, burst or otherwise dismember the human body, I find this rather shocking. Year of the Dragon’s vehemence would ostensibly ‘work’ if it contained at least a nugget of purpose, or, if Cimino had been discriminate in ratcheting up its severity to its frenzied crescendo. Sadly, Cimino is contented merely to give us one blood bath layered upon the next. I lost count of the victims felled in Year of the Dragon after only a few scenes into its 2 hr.+ run time. But it remains one of the most pointlessly hard-nosed and fierce crime dramas ever put on film. It does not help matters that the acting is uniformly bad; ergo, the scenes in which live people actually pause to exchange dialogue without Ginsu-ing or shooting each other in the head, leave the viewer positively craving the next moment when all bets are off and the hatchets, pistols and power rifles come out. Year of the Dragon was not the hit-maker MGM/UA had hoped. After a relatively promising opening weekend, it debuted at #5 at the box office, Year of the Dragon barely grossed $18 million against its $24 million outlay – a bomb, by any measure.
Year of the Dragon also received 5 Razzie Awards for Worst Screenplay, Director, New Find and Actress (both Ariane) and Picture. It incurred outrage from Asian American communities for its racial stereotyping, xenophobia and decidedly perverse slant on Asian culture in general, forcing MGM/UA to preempt the picture with the following flimsy disclaimer, “This film does not intend to demean or to ignore the many positive features of Asian Americans and specifically Chinese American communities. Any similarity between the depiction in this film and any association, organization, individual or Chinatown that exists in real life is accidental.” In the picture’s defense, noted critic, Pauline Kael assessed that Year of the Dragon was no more xenophobic than Cimino’s crown jewel – The Deer Hunter (1978) but referred to its overall structure as ‘flabby’, lacking tension and clarity. Cimino sincerely defended Year of the Dragon as being ‘not a racist film’ but rather a movie in which racist attitudes are exposed for their vile nature, leaving the audience to judge. Setting aside the controversy, Year of the Dragon is not a great film. I would sincerely argue it isn’t even a good one as, in the last analysis, if does not entertain as much as it anesthetizes the senses in a blaze of menial sex and violence that neither substantiates nor punctuates the plot, but has been added in, merely to fill run time, if not necessarily our leisure in meaningful ways.
Warner Archive continues to mine its chestnuts in lieu of its treasures on Blu-ray. Honestly, given all the great stuff still MIA under the studio’s banner, I am getting fairly fed up with their promotion of movies that, by most any collective consensus, even on such culturally astute sites as Rotten Tomatoes, fair from middling to poor in both their public reception and quality, yet continue to get pushed to the head of the line. What gives? As with everything WAC pumps out, no one should be disputing the quality of their efforts. This 1080p transfer sports an impressively rich palette of colors – red, Chinese red…no less – being the predominant hue. At times, the image can look just a tad washed out. But overall, color grading is impressive, showing off Alex Thomson’s cinematography to great advantage. Flesh tones can appear slightly skewed to pink, but again, nothing egregious or distracting. Contrast is a shay weaker than anticipated, although I sincerely suspect this to be a flaw baked into the original film elements and not a flaw of this transfer. Eighties film stock was notorious for this. Film grain can appear thick at times, but this too is indigenous to its source materials. The 5.1 audio shows off David Mansfield’s score to its very best effect. The only extra, apart from a trailer, is Cimino’s audio commentary, recorded at the time of the DVD release from some years ago. Bottom line: Year of the Dragon is a bloody, violent and distressingly tragic movie to wade through. It belies Cimino’s prowess as a film-maker of quality fare because it lacks a core understanding of the basic tenets of good solid film-making (ergo, blood and guts do not a good movie make) or any meaningful character development on which the audience can invest its own passion for good solid storytelling. This Blu-ray has been competently rendered. The movie…well…judge and buy accordingly. Regrets.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS

1 

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