Mickey Rourke and Tracy Tzu seem to deliver their lines in a trance. The audience is asked to swallow the preposterous notion that no one in the NYPD had ever heard of the Triads before Rourke's character rolled into town. When the focus shifts back and forth between the protagonist's personal life and his investigation, we are merely bounced from cliche to cliche. There is even a thoroughly PC speech delivered by Rourke in a Chinese restaurant about all the terrible discrimination faced by Chinese immigrants a hundred years ago. Granted, this is something every schoolkid should learn about, but there's a time and a place. Even in the feeble On Deadly Ground, Steven Seagal did us the courtesy of putting the soapbox speech at the end of his awful movie.
Review of Year of the Dragon
