davideo-2
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning In the early 80s, a swathe of Chinese immigrants arrived on Ellis Island, eager for a new life. Seeing no other way to pursue their slice of 'the American dream', and gain the status and respect they crave, brothers Sonny (Justin Chan) and Steven (Kevin Wu) become part of the titular 'Green Dragons' street gang, who are locked in a turf war with other similarly named Oriental gang members in their area. Detective Michael Bloom (Ray Liotta) follows a lead, tying them to narcotics activities and becomes determined to bring them down. But when one of their members behaviour crosses a line, it plunges the whole group into a deadly spiral of destruction.Adapting a true story, and seeing it's potential for an electrifying action flick, after exhuming some brief history that serves as the backdrop, this biopic of the Green Dragons quickly shifts gear into a high energy, full on action flick, with an Oriental flavour and some brutal, unflinching violence and set pieces. The big draw, though, is Martin Scorsese as executive producer, and after a while it seems he's trying to forge a Goodfellas lite kind of thing, charting how the two central characters became involved in the gang and how their rivalries with each other formed. It's even more down this ark with Ray Liotta as the main star, but even in the lead, this seems like another of his recent 'barely there' parts, with minimal screen time compared to the central protagonists.It's relentlessly flashy, and brutally head on, but it's all completely lacking in coherence, and as a result all seems like a bit of something over nothing, a little too sure of itself without much in the way of genuine substance to keep it going. It makes the mistake of being impetuous when it should have been considered. **
The Couchpotatoes
I read a lot of negative comments about this movie and I wonder why? Because honestly I was entertained during the whole movie. It changes from the usual Italian or Irish gangster stuff. This time it's about the Chinese Mafia with different gangs trying to recruit new members from the illegal immigrants circuit. The story is about two young friends that are made gangsters and you can follow their life when they are grown up. The fact that Martin Scorsese produced this movie also tells you that the story won't be bad otherwise he would not be interested in producing this. Seeing how New Yorks Chinatown took over like almost the whole Little Italy streets tells you also something about that you shouldn't mess with the Chinese triads. Glad they made a movie about those gangs instead of the usual Mafiosi stuff.
raptandy
While watching this film I could not believe that it was made by the same director responsible for the excellent Young and Dangerous and Infernal Affairs sagas. What went wrong here? I suppose its the director's inability to understand American culture which I find rather surprising since this is not the first time he makes a film outside Hong Kong. It is obvious he doesn't know very well the society he wants to talk about therefore the film fails both as a crime film and a study of the life of Chinese living abroad. It's more Tokyo Drift than Once Upon A Time in America, the casting and accents are terrible, there is no third act, and a couple of decent actors get entirely wasted in this cliché ridden mishmash. It's not even worth watching for the violence. Even though there is a certain amount of bloodshed there is nothing memorable or too shocking. I'm sure that the director will continue to make good films in the future but this effort falls flat on its face.
Tyler Durden
I can't believe that Scorsese would put his name on this movie. What a let down! I was really looking forward to this movie. The mafia- plot involving a Chinese-triad-like group with Scorsese involved in the directing seems like a perfect movie to me. Sadly it was not. The movie is straight forward all the way to the last scene. You never get to really know any of the characters, the movie is way to short for that, so you never get really in to it. There's a really weird shooting scene that reminds me of bad action movies from the 90's. And last but most important the story is plain, boring and brings nothing new. Don't waste your time, you have seen it all before.
AD
