After the director Cimino won the Oscar, because of a film, he was silent for five years before exporting the work "The Year of the Dragon". It is a pity that the exaggeration of the white protagonist's halo in the film and the demented ending of the film in the last 5 minutes led to the Chinese boycott of the film as soon as it was released. But objectively speaking, because there is no restriction on the image of the protagonist, Joe Tai has flesh and blood, loses and wins, his joys, sorrows, and ambitions are so three-dimensional, and the image of the Godfather of Chinatown is so deep. I also thank the director for letting Zunlong and the characters. Mutual achievements have brought Zun Long, a stunning actor, to the world.
If the role of the protagonist, the white police officer, is eliminated, it will be a thrilling, calm and decisive history of the Godfather of Chinatown. Compared with domestic films, which often do not even tell the story well, the story of this film is more worthy of careful consideration and intriguing.
The film begins and ends with the funeral.
In the joy of the whole family, this naive grandpa who looks like a birthday boy is the father-in-law of Joe Tai, the current boss of Chinatown.
Unfortunately, the next second, he was assassinated.
At his funeral, the protagonist, the white police officer Danley, appeared and discussed the closure and darkness of Chinatown with his colleagues.
And Joe Tai took his daughter and walked in the coffin delivery line with his wife.
Even if the crowd is crowded, the streets are chaotic
His stern elegance, composure and calmness make the audience unable to ignore
(Handsome fried okay)
It is worth mentioning that,
It was Joe who assassinated his father-in-law, and at the same time at his funeral, instigated his party to assassinate a businessman in Italian city, angered the Italian gangster, and the conflict between the two gangs intensified.
And after the death of his father-in-law, the successor to the Chinatown gang is not Joe
But the higher-ranking former Hong Kong absconded police officer, Yang Haley
Yang Haley is very servile to the newly appointed Sheriff Danley, the Vietnamese and Italian gangsters
Thankful for the hard work, but being insulted, Yang Haley's heart mmp
Then Joe planned a terrorist attack on Yang Hale Restaurant, incited conflicts with Vietnamese gangsters, and occupied the Italian gangster area.
As he got older, the uncles who dealt with things forward and backward faced one after another blow, and chose to oust Yang Haley from power.
Hand over the Chinatown gang to Joe
Yang Haley dare not speak
After taking power, Joe is completely unyielding to the older gangsters
He minimized the other party's profits, lifted the supply standards for Vietnamese gangsters, and resold the drug trade to blacks and Hungarians
Every step of his is the fastest and most ruthless way to get money
It is also the evaluation of him by the older generation of the gangster. He is young and energetic, and he is a young man.
The other party's gangster hides a knife in a smile and ridicules him, but he just laughs it off and continues to chat and laugh with the other party
Cut off the other party's head at night and send it to Vietnam to lower the price
And in the face of the pursuit of the female reporter who digs the news of the gangster
His answers are always dripping
It's just that the only thing that makes the movie puzzling
Even when he was visiting the brothers who were injured in the attack on Yang Hale's restaurant, he still cared for him.
As soon as he left, his men shot the wounded brother and dumped the body.
It was these two corpses that led the white police officer Danley to find Joe.
We can understand here as the contradictions that the film forcibly added to blacken the Chinese gangsters
After all, his office is full of family photos.
When the Chinese asked for him, he generously helped
And the former benefactor has become a waste, and he is willing to save the life of the benefactor.
And the entangled protagonist Danley in order to obtain Joe's incriminating evidence
He set up surveillance in his restaurant office, closed Joe's restaurant business by taking advantage of his position as sheriff, used public opinion to attack Joe, and even inserted spies in Joe's restaurant
What Joe returned to him was killing Danley's wife, sending someone to rape Danley's favorite female reporter, bombing his home, and putting pressure on his boss to lift Danley's jurisdiction over Chinatown, so that female reporters had no right to follow reporting, and sifting the spies he sent
Too bad it's a white protagonist movie
After Danley lost his spy friend, he desperately found Joe and beat him up
Joe's uncles are all old foxes. When the gang encounters unstable factors, they are worried that public opinion will start to tilt again.
In order to stabilize the military, Joe's next drug deal decided to pick up the goods in person
Next is 5 minutes of dementia
I don't want to mention this ending, a happy ending to white heroism
His ending is the director's arrangement out of the general environment
I just want to thank the director. In his portrayal, it is Joe Tai who is affectionate and righteous, not Charlie Chen's inherent ugliness and prejudice against Chinese people in the West.
Even if Danley is abandoned and only Joe is depicted, it may be a masterpiece of Chinese "Godfather"
And Zunlong's superb interpretation, the grasp and expression of every frame of emotion, is also enough to be worthy of his Golden Globe Award nomination
I like this movie, not because in the director's picture, Danley opened his mouth to chink, his feelings of fraternity and discrimination towards Chinese,
It is not the female reporter who suggested that her boyfriend is a foreigner, not a Chinese.
Because of Zunlong, because of Joe.
It's because a few old Cantonese are sitting together. Even in the United States, they speak Cantonese, and every sentence to Danley is our Chinese culture for thousands of years. It's the phrase we are in China.
It is also because in this movie, the Chinese spy faced Danley's doubts and showed the integrity that Chinese people can be killed and not insulted.
The director is a contradiction, but the emotions inside are not. If the director wanted to promote insulting China, he would not be able to shoot Joe Tai at all, and he would not be able to achieve the general adoption of the image of Joe as a gangster in later Hong Kong films.
New York's Chinatown is still the same as in the movie, but I don't know where the former godfather is
Zunlong is even more perfect, even if the ending gave him such an unreasonable arrangement, his what sentence still makes people feel countless interpretations.
His performance made the movie into a movie. Maybe he didn't play Farewell My Concubine, and he didn't come to the impetuous entertainment circle of fame and fortune in China. It was his best choice.
He's still mysterious and awake
Thank you to the world for giving us such a good Zunlong.
View more about Year of the Dragon reviews
