58
Metascore
14 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90Los Angeles TimesSheila BensonLos Angeles TimesSheila BensonYear of the Dragon has an arrogant, electric energy that dares you to look away from the screen for an instant. Do so and you miss a furious piece of action that has bubbled up, seemingly out of nowhere.
- 80Unquestionably, Cimino’s eye for detail and insistence thereon has paid off in his impressive recreation of Chinatown at producer Dino De Laurentiis’ studios in North Carolina. Crammed with an array of interesting characters, including the extras in the background, Dragon brims with authenticity.
- 75Chicago TribuneGene SiskelChicago TribuneGene SiskelIt so often is a joy to look at and so often a pain to listen to.
- 70Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrCimino'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.
- 50Time OutTime OutOnce again Cimino's ability to handle furious action set pieces is well to the fore: a shootout in a Chinese restaurant and a battle with two pistol-packing Chinese punkettes put him in the Peckinpah class. The connecting material, however, is by turns muddled, crass and dull, amounting mostly to Stanley's interminable self-justification.
- 50Washington PostPaul AttanasioWashington PostPaul AttanasioCimino's instincts are right -- the movie is outsized, and it needs baroque dialogue; you get the sense that he'd recognize the right dialogue if he heard it. But when he actually has to come up with it, the result is a series of outrageous hooters: "I've got scar tissue on my soul"; "I carried the cross with you, in Brooklyn and in Queens."
- 40EmpireIan NathanEmpireIan NathanEverything from the style to the casting feels grubby and worn.
- 40The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinIn Year of the Dragon, a busy and elaborate film that manages to be inordinately messy, his tactics are a constant distraction, dissipating the viewer's interest at every turn.
- 30The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelThe movie is a form of hysterical, rabble-rousing pulp, yet it isn't involving; it doesn't have the propulsion of good pulp storytelling.
- 25TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineDirector Michael Cimino turned YEAR OF THE DRAGON, an engrossing novel by Robert Daley, into a confused, overlong, preachy, and at times downright annoying crime epic with a wholly unsympathetic main character played by the totally miscast Mickey Rourke.