Stick together eighties Hollywood's two biggest hypermacho wackadoos--Michael Cimino and his co-scenarist, Oliver Stone--and the result is more noise than was made by Ray Milland and Rosey Grier in "The Thing with Two Heads." The hero--an embattled Polish cop (Mickey Rourke) who takes on historically entrenched corruption in New York's Chinatown--is told by those around him that he "just cares too much." His wife--a grotesque, spreading-rumped proto-diesel dyke played by the unfortunate Caroline Kava--shrills at him that "yesterday was my ovulation day, and you weren't here!" Meanwhile, some springtime trim beckons in the form of a Chinese-American TV-news spokesmodel (Ariane) who sneers at his Caucasian thickheadedness.
Rourke's Stanley White is Stanley Kowalski with a badge--a raging bull of preening self-righteousness. His abrasive dedication to his cause at all cost, his tendency to alienate all those around him, his air of unblinking monomania--sound like anyone you've heard of? Kind of like Oliver Stone, or Michael Cimino, maybe? The filmmakers can't seem to make up their mind whether Stanley is a racist vigilante screwball or the last Boy Scout; sometimes he seems to vacillate from one to the other within the same scene. Throw in a heaping helping of self-pity, some racial and sexual hysterias (these manly filmmakers jump up onto a chair like schoolgirls afraid of a mouse when the ambisextrous John Lone is onscreen), and a cocaine-like feeling of monumental importance, and you have this highly unstable pulp epic. Depending on your mood (and, no doubt, your grandparents' country of origin), the movie can have a gaga enjoyment--Cimino's Visconti-ish grandiloquence can be impressive. If a successful filmmaker's midlife-crisis crying jag turned into an overheated potboiler sounds like it rocks your world, this probably will.
Rourke's Stanley White is Stanley Kowalski with a badge--a raging bull of preening self-righteousness. His abrasive dedication to his cause at all cost, his tendency to alienate all those around him, his air of unblinking monomania--sound like anyone you've heard of? Kind of like Oliver Stone, or Michael Cimino, maybe? The filmmakers can't seem to make up their mind whether Stanley is a racist vigilante screwball or the last Boy Scout; sometimes he seems to vacillate from one to the other within the same scene. Throw in a heaping helping of self-pity, some racial and sexual hysterias (these manly filmmakers jump up onto a chair like schoolgirls afraid of a mouse when the ambisextrous John Lone is onscreen), and a cocaine-like feeling of monumental importance, and you have this highly unstable pulp epic. Depending on your mood (and, no doubt, your grandparents' country of origin), the movie can have a gaga enjoyment--Cimino's Visconti-ish grandiloquence can be impressive. If a successful filmmaker's midlife-crisis crying jag turned into an overheated potboiler sounds like it rocks your world, this probably will.