159: Year of the Dragon (with Adam Nayman)

CW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence and racist themes.

The film critic and author Adam Nayman returns to the show for a deep dive into Michael Cimino’s 1985 pulp crime thriller Year of the Dragon, starring Mickey Rourke, John Lone and introducing the fashion model Ariane Koizumi as the female lead. 

Year of the Dragon was Cimino’s attempt to reassert himself as an important (and commercially viable) American filmmaker after his post-Deer Hunter fall from grace in the wake of the disastrous Heaven’s Gate. Rourke plays Captain Stanley White, a highly-decorated Polish-American cop (and Vietnam veteran) transferred to New York’s Chinatown precinct who pursues an increasingly unhinged personal war against the young and ambitious new leader of the Triads, Joey Tai (Lone), using an ambitious Asian news reporter to do it, leading to an escalating bloodbath. MGM/UA had to add a disclaimer to the film after the release in the wake of protests and legal threats from the Chinese-American community set off by the rabble-rousing screenplay by Cimino and Oliver Stone (on the precipice of his own directing career)

Adam and I discuss Year of the Dragon as a Problematic Fave: an insanely detailed example of screen artifice (including a hyper-realistic fake New York Chinatown built at Dino DeLaurentiis’ studio lot in North Carolina that even fooled Stanley Kubrick) with movie star performances and spectacular filmmaking clashing against chaotic emotional (and racist) outbursts and WTF moments that mark this film as a secret highlight of eighties American cinema, influential not only on Kubrick but also Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Michael Mann. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore!

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Enthusiastic program note for Year of the Dragon from the New Beverly Cinema’s blog, by Ariel Schudson, August 2016

Roger Ebert’s tv review of Year of the Dragon, August 1985

American Year of the Dragon trailer #2

Japanese Year of the Dragon trailer

Italian Year of the Dragon trailer