Film review: Revenge of the Green Dragons
In 1992, a detailed account was published in The New Yorker of the Green Dragons, a violent young Chinese-American gang in Queens, New York. Journalist Fredric Dannen's non-fictional "Revenge of the Green Dragons" chronicled events from the gang's inception in the mid-1980s to its subsequent decline, and painted a panoramic portrait of the unwitting perpetrators of organised crime.
Starring: Justin Chon, Kevin Wu, Harry Shum Jnr, Ray Liotta
Directors: Andrew Lau Wai-keung, Andrew Loo
Category: III (English,Cantonese, Putonghua)
In 1992, a detailed account was published in The New Yorker of the Green Dragons, a violent young Chinese-American gang in Queens, New York. Journalist Fredric Dannen's non-fictional "Revenge of the Green Dragons" chronicled events from the gang's inception in the mid-1980s to its subsequent decline, and painted a panoramic portrait of the unwitting perpetrators of organised crime.
It is the type of precious resource that a filmmaker more attuned to gritty realism could potentially adapt into a masterful gangster movie, as Matteo Garrone did with Gomorrah (2008). Unfortunately, neither Andrew Lau Wai-keung nor Andrew Loo are that type of filmmaker.
Instead, the crude application of slow-motion, corny music and some shockingly contrived lines of dialogue stand out. It is hard to imagine what Martin Scorsese — who previously remade the Lau-co-directed Infernal Affairs into The Departed — thinks about this film, for which he's credited as an executive producer.
As it opens to the horrendous fate of Chinese immigrants newly smuggled into the United States — an issue that was largely absent from Dannen's article — and a casual dismissal of the American Dream, the film offers a hint of historical relevance before sinking into constant sensationalism.
