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Year of the Dragon
Police captain Mickey Rourke finds himself reliving his service in Vietnam when he takes on a Chinatown heroin racketeer (John Lone). Michael Cimino's film gives full rein to his personal tics--Southeast Asia, male bonding, mass social ritual (no less than three funeral scenes in this one)--as well as his usual weaknesses--lumpy narration, rhetorical inflation, wooden dialogue--while staying well within the standard outline of the violent urban thriller. Cimino's talent is at least 50 percent hot air, but the part that is not--his superb feel for movement across the Panavision frame--seems especially valuable. Say what you will about his overstuffed, overdetailed images, they at least represent a notion of cinema, as opposed to the flat television aesthetic that dominates Hollywood, that no film lover can afford to ignore. |
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