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Stanley White: A fish stinks from the head down.
Uncle Harry: The Chinese eat the head.
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Stanley White: You're right, I'm Wrong. Sorry. I'd like to be a nice man. I would. I just don't know how to be nice.
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Louis Bukowski: You care too much, Stanley.
Stanley White: How can anybody care too much?
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Stanley White: The first time I saw you, I hated your guts. I think I even hated you before I met you. I hated you on TV. I hated you in Vietnam. You want to know what's destroying this country? It's not booze. It's not drugs. It's TV. It's media. It's people like you. It's vampires. I hate the way you make your living sticking microphones in people's faces. You lie every night at 6: 00. I hate the way you kill real feelings. I hate everything that you stand for. Most of all, I hate rich kids and I hate this place. So why do I want to fuck you so bad?
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Tracy Tzu: I think you upset him.
Stanley White: I certainly hope so.
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Tracy Tzu: You're acting like a child.
Stanley White: Well, a great man is one who in manhood still keeps the heart of a child.
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Joey Tai: Dollars are like small fish, difficult to catch, but not to be thrown back except as bait for something bigger.
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Stanley White: I'm no Italian. I'm a Polack. And I can't be bought.
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Description
A Vietnam vet turned New York City cop vows to bring down a Chinatown crime lord.
Amazon.com
Redemption for director Michael Cimino and burgeoning stardom for actor Mickey Rourke were on the agenda when Year of the Dragon was released in 1985, and even if those things didn't quite come to pass, the result was nevertheless an entertaining, at times even compelling film. Cimino, seven years removed from his Oscar triumph The Deer Hunter and five years past the debacle that was (and still is) Heaven's Gate, made a move back into the mainstream with this violent tale about New York's Chinatown, where gangs and heroin-dealing Chinese "triads" hold sway--at least until police captain Stanley White comes on the scene, fiercely determined to put the bad guys out of business. As portrayed by Rourke, White is arrogant, boorish, and bullheaded, a thoughtless jerk who puts anyone who cares about him in mortal danger, all of which we're supposed to forgive because he served in Vietnam and is so righteously intent on doing his job. Problem is, White is almost completely unlikable, rendering his relationships with his long-suffering wife (Caroline Kava) and his TV reporter girlfriend (a wooden Ariane) implausible in the extreme. Add to that a script (by Cimino and Oliver Stone) filled with stilted, macho dialogue and a level of facile racism and sexism that would be unacceptable by new millennium standards, and you've got a tough sell. Still, Cimino knows how to direct the action sequences, and he's able to sustain a good level of tension as the story builds toward its inevitable confrontation between White and young crime lord Joey Tai (John Lone, channeling Al Pacino in The Godfather: Part II). And the aftermath? Cimino made only four movies in the ensuing twenty years, none of them exactly blockbusters, while Rourke sank into a self-inflicted oblivion from which he has yet to recover. Not exactly the hoped-for outcome, but neither of them should be ashamed to have Year of the Dragon on his resume. --Sam Graham
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