Year of the Dragon Reviews

Michael Cimino is what you could consider a really doomed director. Indeed, once a wonder boy following the release of ‘The Deer Hunter’, he completely destroyed his career with the really misguided ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and he single-handedly managed to end up the golden age of American cinema, an age when the authors were given pretty much carte blanche and a seemingly unlimited budget. Since then, Cimino never really recovered, he only made 5 other movies afterwards and it has been already 20 years since he released another movie. It is actually quite a shame since the guy seemed to be actually quite talented. Anyway, he made this flick 5 years after the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ disaster and even though it was not really a masterpiece, I thought it was pretty good though. At the time, Mickey Rourke was still quite a popular actor with a pretty face and I thought he gave a solid performance. Above all, even though the story was rather pedestrian, I really enjoyed the mood created by Michael Cimino (In fact the exterior shots of New York City were actually sets which were built somewhere else and they were so convincing, so realistic, that they even fooled Stanley Kubrick who attended the movie's premiere even though he was actually born in the Bronx). To conclude, even though it is nothing amazing whatsoever, I think it is still a decent flick and it is definitely worth a look.