Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Year of the Dragon

I watched Michael Cimino's 1985 film from an old VHS cassette, afterwards I threw the cassette away. Why? Because I want to get rid of my old cassettes - of course only those that can be replaced. But seems like everything is replaceable nowadays. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not.

I'd seen Cimino's film earlier - some 20 years ago, or even longer ago - and it hadn't made much of an impact on me. The same thing happened also at this time. One might blame the fact that I watched the movie from a worn cassette with possibly a wrong picture ratio. But still I find I wasn't very intrigued with Cimino's script and his characters. I'm not sure if I ever want to try to see this on big screen.

Even though there might be much to like in the film for someone who likes his crime fiction heroes despicable. Mickey Rourke is not bad in Year of the Dragon, but he's overdone with his fedora and long overcoat. His motivations are not very satisfactorily explained and he almost comes off as the hero, even though he's shown to be a bully and racist. This is a very contradictory film at its heart.

There are many great scenes in the film (such as Chinese drug lord John Lone's visit to Thailand, also the shootout near the end is expertly done), but there's also the stacked-on ending, which is really unfitting. And then there's the scene in which Rourke almost attacks a woman after which the said woman starts kissing Rourke... You'd think they wouldn't have done these things in this way in 1985, but hey, what do you know?

More Overlooked Films here. (Seems like only later on.)

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: The Sicilian

Already see the pattern? Again an interesting, but flawed film. This time it's Michael Cimino's The Sicilian, one of his last big films before a many years' hiatus. This is a very handsome, but pretty confusing film, with a too convoluted storyline about Salvatore Giuliano, a Sicilian rebel who fights the local aristocracy over the lands and steps on the toes of the Mafia.

Gore Vidal supposedly wrote the script for this, but Steve Shagan rewrote it either too heavily or too lightly. There's too much stuff that doesn't make much sense. The theme of an innocent man getting mixed in the web of politics and corruption and getting corrupted himself is always interesting, though. One would like to compare this to the earlier Italian version, Salvatore Giuliano, directed by Leftist Francesco Rosi, but I haven't seen that myself. The biggest drawback in Cimino's film is that it stars Christopher Lambert. The guy is very handsome, but can't act shit. Joss Ackland steals every scene he's in. I'd hoped John Turturro would've been given a better role as Giuliano's brother. Same goes for Terence Stamp, whose prince doesn't have a lot to do, even though I'd like to think Cimino would've liked to deal with him more. The larger social themes don't much show here.

I watched this (this too!) on VHS, but luckily the version I'd found was the director's version that lasts 2:11 or something like that. This supposedly makes more sense than the original version shown in cinema (I'd seen that and even written a review of it, but can't remember much of it). Cimino's original edit is said to have been 150 minutes. Seems like a pattern for Cimino.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog.