Speaker 1: Meaning a light Man like this man letting butterfly flapping
and wing big down in the forest. Man, it gonna
cause the tree fold, letting five thousand miles away. Man,
nobody seen, nobody else.
Speaker 2: See.
Speaker 1: You don't need no Man, don't you follow another story?
Speaker 2: And you got back to flect that that win?
Speaker 1: Man, don't black to night on the panel. Man, Man,
you don't don't matter, Man.
Speaker 2: I don't anyway, all right, Pete, welcome back to the
Jay Burton Show. How you doing? Man?
Speaker 1: Doing good? Man, I'm so happy to be talking about
anything other than what's in the news today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've Uh, it's funny because the current events shows,
and I'm sure it's the same period they always do
really well. But anytime I say anytime the times that
I do talk about, you know, cars or gun autism
or a random movie, I get dozens of messages of
people saying, oh, thank god, something else right, something to
keep me from going crazy. Like one of the local
OGC guys sent me a message about that. And I
did a recent episode with bag Beyond on Hail Caesar,
and I feel like it's a common it's a common
feeling where a lot of us just sort of feel
not to say overwhelmed, but just depressed by the news. Right,
it's bad. It was bad two weeks ago, it's probably
gonna be bad two weeks from now, and so yeah,
it's good to sort of get your head above the water. Damn.
I'll let you introduce our subject, because uh, really, before
you recommended me this movie, I never heard anything about it.
I'd never seen it, and so yeah, man, I'll let
you start.
Speaker 1: So this movie is okay, this is how I found
this movie. I'm old enough to have gone to video stores.
And you go to a video store, you've seen everything already,
and you're like, okay, what is there out there? And
there's this Mickey Rourke movie. And I liked Mickey Rourke
at the time, and it's and it has all this
like Asian stuff on it, and I'm like, all right,
this looks pretty good. Called Year of the Dragon came
out in nineteen eighty five, and I look at it
and I see, oh, co written by Oliver Stone, this
should be this should be interesting. I liked Salvador at
the time. I thought that was maybe his best picture,
one of the best pictures he ever made. And then
I watch it and I'm like, everything in this movie
is over the top. The violence, the women, the racism,
everything is just like I'm like, oh, this is this
is the kind of movie that I can watch over
and over again, and because there's great lines in it,
the actions insane. There are hit men dressed like new
wave artists for no reason whatsoever, and You're and You're like,
they could be they could be hit men. They could
also be in Kasha Googu. I have no clue what's
going on with the like who did the costuming on
this movie, but the movie is just literally insane from
start to finish. So yeah, I went when I saw that,
you and You and Andy talked about Angel Heart, which
is another it's an insane, insane movie, and I was like, hey,
you know, if you if you think Mickey Rourke was
good in that, check this out. And Mickey Rourke is
just way over. I mean, they just I think they
just went to him. I think Sumino went to him
and just said, look, you could do anything, you can
say anything, and we're going to keep it in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this movie is so like there's this kind of
meme idea of like the eighties B movie, right, you know,
the kind of stuff that's like parodied in like the
Simpsons and stuff like that. And if you actually go
and watch like the old Cannon films stuff like that,
they're not actually that good. They're really boring. The production
value was too low, so like you might see an
old junker, you know, blow up, but really, like the
the actual real B movies of the era weren't that good.
This is what you want it to be. As you've said,
it's an insane movie. And that's part of why I
was so entertained by it. It's because consistently through the
whole thing, like don't get me wrong, there's a lot
of those kind of classic detective cop movie tropes in there,
but things escalate so quickly and kind of out of
nowhere that for your first viewing, you're just along for
the ride. Like it's a long movie, it's what two
hours fifteen minutes plus or minus. It does not feel
like that. It is from go You're just on for
the ride. And I mean you mentioned Mickey Rourke, who
I was talking to one of my buddies about this movie. Uh,
and they were they described kind of the second Mickey
Rourke right after he went back to boxing and then
tried to get back to acting as a man made
out of oreo filling, which is a pretty good description.
But to see him, you know, kind of when he
was still in his heart throb Era and again just
chewing the scenery like there is no emotion. He doesn't
give to you. At you know, an eleven out of ten,
it's I mean, it's incredibly entertaining and so like right off,
like the very beginning of the movie, you get what
you kind of expect from, you know, a New York
cop movie. Right we're going through it's a funeral, I believe,
uh of a you know, a figure in kind of
in Chinatown and you see one of these. It is
kind of funny because you're the cops in this are
almost using the like New York post euphemisms the whole time, right,
the rowdy youths, you know, break into this store. And
the sort of broader conflict of this is basically the
Chinese triads have had a deal with both the Italian
mafia and NYPD to sort of keep crime under wraps.
So there's drugs, there's gambling, but it's kept within a
certain range, and there's a new up and comer. You know,
in the Chinese mafia, you know there's there's a new
generation who's who's going crazy. And to start to this again,
if we're talking about that escalation, it's right off the
rip because you know, you're you're going through this sort
of funeral scene. It's it's you know, very Chinese, or
at least I guess it's Chinese. And you see this
kind of like old timey New Yorker shopkeeper and you
know he's he's arguing with this kid like, oh, I
pay my protection money to the Italians, not to you,
and the kid just blasts his brains out all over
the store like the ninety second mark.
Speaker 1: It's the whole idea behind it. First of all, I mean,
there's so much we can say about this because there
are Oliver Stone being one of the main writers on this,
and Michael Samino, the director who Michael Simino directed The
Jear Hunter, which was considered to be, you know, one
of the it's considered one of the greatest movies of
all time and I'm pretty sure he won the Oscar
for that. And he so he directs this, and you
have a Vietnam movie, and then you have a movie
which I look at this movie and I'm like, this
movie is just like a guy came home from Vietnam
and he's still fighting the war, but he's fighting it
in New York City and he's fighting it, like not
against the Vietnamese, but he's just like, well they look alike,
so let's go to war with the Chinese. But yeah,
right off the rip, I mean, you get this, you
get a murder, and then you get of a what
looks like a Jewish shopkeeper, and then like, I think,
what half a minute and a half later, you get another,
you get like an assassination. I mean it's like it's
one thing after another, and you realize what this up
and comer Joey Taye played by John Loan is doing
is is he's creating chaos and he's doing the you
know a lot of what we see politicians doing now
what we see a lot of countries, a lot of
regimes do where if they want to take control of something,
they think that what they can do is they can
create total chaos of a situation. And then they and
they actually are directing the chaos or controlling the height
of the flame to use another term. And he thinks
that Oh, if I can do this, I'll be able
to take over everything. And I'll be able Now Chinatown.
Now this this heroin trade, this opium trade, belongs to me.
And you know, I mean we not to get too
far into the movie, but you know, you you get
to the point where you can see in his eyes
where he's like, oh, I've lost control and I don't
know what I'm gonna do to get it back.
Speaker 2: And this is a sort of a background conflict you
see in the movie, is you know, our main villain
kind of butting up against the other crime bosses. There's
a moment we'll get to later where he you know,
has a sort of blow up with the you know, Italians,
which is one of the greatest scenes in the movie, right,
the Italian mob boss he's had a trachey ectomy, so
he's got a little voice spots and so it's like
Stephen Hawking talking like a He's New York mobster. Which
but in that you know, earlier in the film, he's
talking to the other kind of Chinese try a leaders
and you know they are You're constantly talking about, you know, oh,
the need for harmony, the need to not rock the
boat and this kid's just going and guns blazing. So
this assassination is honestly, it's it's such a great like
set piece action scene. So our our main character, Officer White,
let's just a luttle on. That's all right, guys, come on, like,
can you deficit le something, you know, make him like
a Porto real we call him Blanco or something.
Speaker 1: Well, and then we find out he's a Paul Lockh's
changed his name.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, but so he's meeting with his love interest,
this Chinese American reporter who primarily reports on Chinese issues
for an English language magazine.
Speaker 1: By the way, by the way, let me answer up
for a second. Her acting is horrible. It's the worst
part of the movie is her acting.
Speaker 2: Yes, uh, yes, she's a male.
Speaker 1: She was a model. They brought her in.
Speaker 2: We know why she's there, Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I get the feeling just from listening to her. She
didn't go to Juilliard. Uh, but this scene so and honestly,
it really kind of reminded me of the nightclub shootout
in uh Temple of Doom. Right, Obviously that's a different
style of movie, but it is similarly over the top.
So these two kids come in with uzzi's, which, by
the way, eighties crime uzzies are the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 1: They really are. Man, that's why I always wanted one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It's the same thing with a mac ten,
where it's like, okay, obviously mac ten is way worse
than an oozy, but it's the same like part of
my brain that's like, yeah, I want to look like
an eighties new wave Chinese hit man who's fourteen, I
don't know, whatever, it's cool. And they just ose down
tire restaurant with bullets to assassinate one guy. And they're
like this blasting people in the restaurant, Like would we
hear the like the gunshots. This random woman in the
background like rows up her arms in the air and
we just see the squibs like stitching across her body.
She almost gets cut in half, and so you know,
Mickey Rourke leaps into action, right he starts returning fire
in this restaurant, shoots one of them and then wrestles
another one down the stairs. So they're wrestling down the stairs.
The oozy is just ripping off into the ceiling and
one of these kids ends up shooting themselves in the foot,
so you know, they escape and I can't remem if
it's right before right after, but oh, it's right after
because we see another great stock character right the police chief,
which I mean, this is like something out of Lethal Weapon,
which I realized, you know, that was less of a
kind of trope at the time. This is like, this
is the the New York cop movie of your dreams.
The best way to describe it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the captain who does you have the captain who
wants to keep his cool, but he also has Mickey
Rourke's like childhood friend there who's not his not his boss,
but a colleague. I think he never really makes it
clear exactly what they are other than like childhood friends.
And it seems like the captain is the one who
is like, yeah, I'm just I mean, she used leth
the webin. I'm too old for this shit. I don't
want to deal with this. We these people police themselves.
We will kick ass on the gangs if things get
out of hand down there, but we leave the gambling alone,
we'll leave the drugs alone. We leave everything alone, you know.
And it's one of those things that you can make
political because you look at at it now and You're like, yeah,
this is just another example of importing another group of
people into your country who are going to start doing
things that their way and they're going to get power.
I mean, at one point they say, Joey Say gives
one hundred Jonate's one hundred thousand dollars a year to
the mayor. And it's like, okay, well, you bring this
captain in who wants to kick ass on the Chinese
and isn't just kicking ass on the gangs but the
young kids. But he's kicking ass on gambling and every
and anything else they have. He's turned. He's upsetting the
apple cart while Joey's upsetting the apple carts. So you
have too these two forces that are that are hitting
each other causing chaos. And it's like, okay, well that's
how you get fucking squibs, you know, you get people
cut in half by a fucking oozy in a restaurant.
It's just I mean, it's but you're right. The the
amount of tropes as far as like NYPD, like the
first Like in the first scene when when Tracy is
trying to interview the captain on the on the the horse,
that guy is a cop in like every eighties movie there,
I mean, there's it's like they couldn't they couldn't like
pick somebody else. It had to be that one guy
who was just like gonna speak in euphemisms, no comment,
We're you know, we're just here to try to keep
the peace and help whenever we can. And then you know,
Stanley comes in and is just like, yeah, we're just
I'm I'm just gonna blow this place up. And the
great scene is when he says, what does he say
about He's addressing all the cops, all the uniformed officers,
and he said, if you if I hear any of
you on the take, you know, I'm gonna hit you.
I'm gonna pune you in the mount And and he
says what if and the woman's she's one of the
female cops goes, what if it's a woman? He goes, well,
then she better bend over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just way over.
Speaker 1: I mean everything in this movie is just like they
just told Mickey Rourke fucking act, like, take the stereotype
New Yorker, times it by ten and make him a
New York police captain that wants to kill every Chinese
person he meets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's basically that's basically the movie. So another
one of the ongoing plots is that, uh, you know,
Mickey Rourke has his wife who is seemingly grew up
in the same neighborhood as him, and his childhood best friend.
That becomes relevant later in the film. They're they're trying
for a baby. He's obsessed with the job. You know,
he missed, he missed the window. She's real mad at him.
We also see some again this movie moves at like
one hundred miles an hour, so that we see that
he's not helping out around the house. Right, everything's run down.
When we meet her, his wife is like rebuilding a
washing machine, you know, on the kitchen floor, and so
they have a they have a fight. Of course, you know,
their relationship obviously goes south over the course of this film.
But uh, when we we sort of you know, get
back kind of into the action, right, obviously, we have
this tension between you know, Mickey Rourke's character, Officer White,
who basically says, you know, this is all in the
Chinese triad. The higher ups are saying, like, what are
you talking about? This is just some youth gang, you know,
going crazy and uh, you know, to sort of sort
of wage I guess you could say, kind of a
gorilla war campaign. He you know, pulls this reporter into
it to try and you know, expose this story. But
as part of this he realizes, well, I'm gonna need
I'm gonna need a Chinese guy to go in undercover,
right because they'll all know me. We need to find
someone who you know, isn't known as a cop. So
they go to the police academy and they pick out
this kid. This is his name, Uh, Harry right, Harry Young.
Isn't that his name? I don't think yeah, yeah, uh
or something like that. It's it's a fake name. He
even says, like, my Chinese name's too complicated. And you
know they pick him up. He's not even a full
police officer yet. So one of my and I figured
you and I would have an interesting conversation about this one.
The scene where they meet this kid is at the
qualification range where you see the greatest old timey Hollywood
like pistol shooting. You can imagine it's just so it's
so good when they're well. Another thing is is I
love how they they shot it to go down the
line and he's literally like a head shorter than everyone else.
And so you have all these guys who are there
and they're all, you know, they're like, I guess proto
tactical because police weren't really tactical back then.
Speaker 1: That that that came much later. And then they show
him shooting the target. He's nowhere near the nowhere near
the center of the target. It's like, oh, we're gonna
throw this guy out of the street. And it's just
I mean, it's it was at least the other movie
that did this where they went into the police academy
was The Untouchables. They went got Andy Garcia out of
the police academy and everything.
Speaker 2: I mean, weapons got another one, right, very famous range scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, and so Andy, yeah, Andy Garcia comes in.
But at least he could shoot. I mean, you knew
that they were. And when they're driving in the car,
when they picked this kid up and they tell them
what he's going to be doing, his reaction is just
a bad He doesn't care that this guy's a police captain.
I mean, the way they're talking to each other is
just it's just like the do It's like Samino to
all them of just like talk to each other like you,
I mean, be as belligerent to each other as possible.
Speaker 2: Well and to that point, like his objections are so
hilarious because he's like, all right, I still have a
part time job. You want me to quit my job?
Like I'm sending money back home? Like you think I
could just quit And he's just like, yeah, quit your
job tomorrow, you work for us. But the side part,
and it's kind of funny because this movie has a
very very slight fig leaf where it's like, oh, Officer
White had to learn to not be racist a little bit.
But it's it's a really really little fig leaf because
when they're driving around, It've got this young kid driving
and he is a horrible driver in the middle of.
Speaker 1: The left plane, stay in the left lane, and.
Speaker 2: These guys are making fun of him for the whole time.
He's getting more and more bad. It's just like genuinely
a ridiculous situation. Uh So, in the background, while all
this is happening, the two shooters right, both of whom
have been been wounded in this assassination attempt, are are
kind of hold up in a safe house and we
hear Officer White even say like, look if they're wounded,
it's gonna be real hard to hide. You know. They'll
show up in hospital or something. And we see a
scene where are our main villain, right, Johnny Tye comes in,
you know, offers these guys cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Joey Tye be respectful.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'll I'll be honest. This isn't me making a point.
Names and faces are tough in this movie, That's all.
I'll say, Uh, what is you? What is you? Sex me?
Speaker 1: Earlier? He sexed me. My biggest complaint with this movie
is I can't tell half the cast apart.
Speaker 2: Well, it's true, because what would happen is there be
a dramatic reveal where like the camerawood pan and be like, oh,
it's him. There's a sting and I'm sitting as it.
H'm like, we do we know who that is? Is
that him or just? And it doesn't help that even
the main romantic lead has a very androgynous haircut, so
unless it's a close up, you're kind of guessing based
on contact of who anyone is. Uh. And obviously there
are some characters who are much more visually distinct than others,
but also the fact that everyone's especially the criminals are
dressed like lunatics at all moments, right, It's actually pretty
hard to tell. So point is when Ty comes in, obviously,
he gives these guys cigarettes, ask how they're doing, and
then you know, brings in a guy to shoot them.
Is the guy who shot them a notable person or
is he just the guy who pulled the trigger, because
I couldn't remember if that was or I couldn't tell
if that was another character or not.
Speaker 1: I think that the if I remember the original VCR
had subtitles on that point, and he was like a
new guy, and they were, Okay, we gotta, we gotta,
you know, break him in, so you're gonna kill these
two guys, and that's okay, that makes sense. Very he's
very hesitant when he's doing it. He doesn't want to
do what you can tell. He's not like he's he
hasn't killed anybody yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, subtitles are one hundred percent necessary for this movie
because there's probably like thirty percent of it that's in Chinese,
and hypothetically, if you watched the movie through an illegitimate source,
your subtitles might not have been great. Speaking from experience,
so there are several ports of this movie where I'm like,
I feel like I got what happened. But uh so, yeah,
obviously we see that, you know, just ties absolute uh
absolute ruthlessness there and uh later when we kind of
pick up with uh with Officer White, he's he's discovered
their bodies, and their bodies have been dumped in like
a noodle factory. It's super gross.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a I think they said it was a
soybean vat or something like that where yeah, right, had
soybeans where yeah, so and they said something like, oh
we wouldn't. I'm surprised we discovered it. They could have
gotten lost down there forever. It's like, well, what the
hell's going on in Shine Town? It's like, what are
you talking about. You're supposed to be making food down there.
How do you have bodies in a vat? You're not
gonna know that. It's like they're good to the top.
Speaker 2: Well, this is one of my favorite background characters is
the old Chinese guy who discovered these He's just while
the while they're doing the examination, while you the police officers,
like it was kind of like examining these bodies. And again,
as we mentioned before, the violence is crazy over the top,
like these guys have like bullet holes in their head.
One of the weird ones is a lot of people
get shot through the cheek in this movie. Yeah, which
is face. Yeah, it's you know it. It is what
it is. But he's just going on about how young
people these days don't have no respect and how they
don't think, like no interruption. He's just rattling off like
lot minutes.
Speaker 1: It's hilarious, and Stanley finally goes, you're He says, you're
a good man. There should be more like you. And
he turns around and just goes bullshit. It's like what
And Stanley just looks at him, like what the hell
is going on here? He says he's been working down
there for forty years. I mean that is to bring
it back. You're talking about a fucking This is not
a civilization. This is not what what have you imported?
What have you allowed to come here? You know? And
like one thing that Joey says at one point is
extortion and bribery when it comes to the Chinese is
a thousand years is a thousand years of business?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And yeah, so oh, where do you want to go
from there? I mean there's a there's a whole lot more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in the kind of you know, secondary plot,
h our main character has you know, to sort of
patch things up with the misses, uh and says, you
know what, like, we'll go out to a fancy restaurant, right,
And this restaurant is seemingly owned by Joey Tye, or
at least he's in there, and so he basically sits down,
he's late for a date with his wife, sees Joey
Tye and just goes apient. He just starts punching him
and as part of that, a pack of cigarettes is
I think he offers him a cigarette before the you
know that the fight breaks out, and h he realizes
that's the same brand that the guys in the Soyvat had,
you know, so he's sort of starting to build the
connection there, and you know, that seems funny in its
own right. But when he comes back, you know, his
wife is stormed out, she's gone. He comes back to
their place and all of these clothes are just out
in the front yard. She's done with him. So he
basically gets drunk, drives down the street, finds this reporter.
It just starts harassing her from a moving car. She
invites him back to her place. He comes over, they
like kiss for a little bit, and she's like, yeah,
I can't do this. I've got my uh you know,
I always just you know, making love with my boyfriend
all day. She just loses it, right because this fake
boyfriend we later find out he's fake, is a lawyer,
and she starts going off about lawyers, how there everything
wrong with society. She gets bad, he gets bad. He leaves,
walks out the door, walks back in the door, walks in,
still laps her in the face like four times, and
then you know, they go to bed together. And again,
this is what I'm talking about for this movie. It
never slows down, and it's like zero to sixty in
no time flat. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that whole the whole dynamic with the uh the
Chinese reporter is is probably if I wasn't so immune
to charges of racism and stuff like that, I would
just say that's the most over the top thing in
the whole movie, because it's like, I mean, she's she's
literally he's literally just treating her like a Vietnamese prostitute
the whole time, the whole movie, and it's like, and
I think even she even says that. At one point,
she says it makes a comment about him not still
not being in Vietnam. You know, I'm not, I'm not
I'm not a hooker in Vietnam and everything, and it's
just like you're looking at this dynamic, and the dynamic
is basically he's using her. When she says anything that
insults him, he just absolutely loses it. And then what
Leo like, later he finds out that she's been hurt,
and he's not mad that she got hurt. He's mad
that like a piece of my property you messed with,
Like you messed with a tool that I'm using for
my job, and now it's like I'm not gonna be
able to use this tool anymore. He's so insane. It's
just you realize, like you start to realize at one
point we'll talk about that that point. There's a there's
a marker in the movie that shows where he like
like where everything starts escalating in his mind. So, yeah,
the the Chinese Reporter is just honestly the most offensive
character in the whole movie.
Speaker 2: Well, and there's a there's a seed, which again is
so over the top it's like the second time he
ends up in her place where she's like, you know,
oh you're you know, you're a racist, and he gets
like kind of offended for a little bit, but then
he's like, yeah, I hated you in Vietnam. I hated
and he's not talking about her, he is talking about Charlie.
Well we'll keep it at that, right, So and he
goes on this insane rant where he's like, yeah, I
hated you on TV. I hated the first time I
heard you. I hated the first time I saw you.
It's the most like insane, over the top rant possible,
and she's kind of bothered but also not really, which
you know, if you've been around right wing people before,
you will have seen this dynamic right as a wide
man would have said, never ask a white nationalist the
race of his girlfriend. Uh. But it is not only
in that dynamic over the top, but there are other
moments will get too, kind of closer to the end
of the film, where it's just for rating her constantly.
Uh So there's sort of a a the one time
we really leave Oh, actually, I guess first we have
to have this is his uh, the conversation with the
Italian mob's guy with you know, Joey Tie, and basically
what they're he is with you know, kind of the
other members of the Chinese mafia. He is on paper,
sort of a junior partner. But through this conversation and
his actions of the film, we realize what's going on here. Right.
He wants to take over, and basically they're renegotiating a
deal between these Italian guys and an earlier generation of
you know, kind of triad guys and you know, Ties
strong arming them. The Italian guy. So one of the
kind of background henchmen is this sort of like like
he looks like a character from a black exploitation film, right,
he's just kind of ties hired muscle, but he's got
like an afro. He dresses kind of like a pimp.
He's got a bunch of rings on, and you'll have
to watch it for yourself. I can't say this on YouTube,
but the Italian guys refer to him is equally over
the top. But as I said earlier, the mobster he
has the voice box, right, the traggy activity, and I
think that's how you say it. But point is, it's
just like the best gangster speech ever delivered through a
little like speak and spell. It's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the uh, the having to include the Italians is
really is really important if you're going to talk about
New York because maybe a lot of people don't understand
the geography of New York. But the Chinese are in
Chinatown and Canal Street runs across across Manhattan Island and
Mott Street and Chinatown are on the south side of
the island. Just right over Mott Street on the other
side of Mott Street is little Italy Carmine Street. Places
like that. I mean, they're right next to each other.
There's just one big avenue separating them. So they have
to have a if they're going to be able to
do business, there has to be some kind of truce.
There has to be some kind of some kind of understanding.
And if you're going to say, well, we had this,
you know, we've had this agreement with you talking to
the Italian mob for X amount of years and really
X amount of decades and now I'm changing it, and
you're going to have the kind of attitude that Joey
Tie has that he knows more than them. He's the
young guy. He understands everything. You're going to expect to
You're going to expect an Italian guy, even one who's
had a tracheotomy or something. I don't even know what
that is. Even a guy with that, he's going to
you're going to hear it. And especially after that the
assassination at the beginning of that Jewish business store owner,
You're you're basically taking out that's one stream of income
gone now and and you have to be they're going
to see that this is the Italians aren't stupid enough
to think that that was just gangs. They're going to
know something is going on. So that's how they went
into that meeting. They went into that meeting that knowing
that someone's making a move. And you know it was
when I think once he starts seeing the way Joey
Tai talks and speaks to them, that yeah, this is uh,
this is a guy who's basically pulling the strings right now.
Speaker 2: So next we have kind of a diversion right where
in order to secure his supply, Ti needs to go
back to Thailand, which is where this heroin is coming from.
There are you know, triad figures there who he has,
you know, deal with, And then there's also this sort
of like group of gorillas. It's never explicitly said, you
know who they are? Apparently they were fighting with the Burmese.
Maybe we can ask Carl Dahl who they're supposed to be.
I don't know, jungle Asians who hate the Burmese, right,
But point is, so he goes back to Thailand. He's
got his hired muscle with him, which, again it's a
very funny, like it's never explicitly drawn attention to, but
seeing this sort of like stereotypical New York pimp walking
through like rice patties in the middle of nowhere is
really funny. So he goes back and he meets with
this guy called It's white Powder Tow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, look, man, I'm American enough that any Asian name,
I'm lucky to get half of it. So he goes
back right to sort of work on his deal with
with this guy, at least so we think. So he's
meeting with one of his associates, meets up with Ma
and then we see, you know, he says, hey, you know,
let's meet for dinner, and then the film moves on.
They're driving in this kind of like absurd rickety four
by four out to the middle of nowhere. Him and
his kind of jive muscle like slumped in the seat
next to him. They're going around like like water buffalo
and stuff. And they get out to this rebel camp
out in the middle of nowhere. You later find out
it's like five hundred miles away from you know, the airport.
And you know, apparently these two guys have history. They
both served under the same general. Right, the general we
see who is Senisle and just on a constant drip
of heroin, right, his mind is basically gone.
Speaker 1: And kind of disturbing too. Yeah, No, it's definitely it
was very disturbed. Very that's when you start seeing the
deer Hunter, like the disturbing parts of the deer Hunter
and the jungle kind of stuff come out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I don't know if you notice he has
like completely black teeth, like they're just rotted out of
his head.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so you know he sits down across from this
general and you know they're talking business. They're sort of
to go siating, you know, back and forth over the
details of Obviously the the general wants more money. He says,
you know what, will we'll refine it to an additional
stage for you ship you refined product. You're gonna have
to pay for it. Uh, you know, tie disagrees, and
again this kind of repeated you know motif of basically
you know, being for or being kind of encouraged to
kill someone to prove a point. The General brings out
you know that this mentor and says like, all right,
like you know, you've got to shoot him. He passes
the gun down the desk and obviously, you know, tie
Is has been shown to be completely and totally ruthless,
but we see a rare moment of conscience where he
basic says like, now I'm not going to do it,
but I'll pay you five grand for it, right, I'll
buy him. And you know, after that, the negotiations kind
of go south. He basically says like, look like you're insignificant.
I've got you know, white powder, mo, what what do
I need you? And he reaches into his back, pulls
out a box and holds out white power mods ahead
by the hair and like the rows it down the table.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Actually, one other thing speaking of this movie, going from
from like zero to sixty, when he refuses to shoot him,
the General's like, okay, well we don't need to waste
a bullet on him. So they tie him to a
stick in the back, and one of his goons has
like a tree branch and he's about ready to smash
his head in with a stick.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The it just goes to show that he at
that point, anyone who really knows anything about organized crime, government,
same thing, he's so out of control that there's no
way he's gonna be able to pull this back. And
he's trying to kill he's trying to consolidate everything to himself,
and he just as smart as he is, he just
you can't that with that culture. You know, it's like
people who it's like getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Okay,
Saddam Hussein kept that country basically from like evolving into
people could say whatever, Oh as kids went around doing
this and doing that. Okay, maybe I don't know ever
really seen any evidence of that. It it could be legend,
it could be if they were I hope they're burned
in hell. If they were doing that, I hope they're
burn it in hell. But you have to have a
certain order in order for certain cultures to be able
to exist and to be to be prosperous. I mean,
look at Singapore. If Singapore wasn't the most totalitary, one
of the most totalitarian countries on the planet, they would
devolve into chaos overnight. You have Chinese and Japanese. I mean,
you have all these Asian groups that absolutely hate each other.
There is no better racism on the planet than the
racism between Asian groups. They absolutely cannot stand each other.
And you just see Joey is just devolving into this.
He thinks that he's going to be able to rule
this all by himself with a couple of gangs on
the street. He doesn't have any plans, there is no
It's very much like a lot of politicians you see nowadays.
They get things rolling, but they don't have an end
Like they think they have an endgame, but the endgame
is cannot be had the way they're playing it. And yeah,
I think that's why when Joey gets back to New York,
I think you see a sense of urgency there, a
sense of he's not the calm guy he is the
first half of the movie before he goes to Thailand.
Speaker 2: And one of the scenes that I forgot to mention
that is important is that when Joey is sitting down
with the Italians. Our main character, right, Mickey Rourke has
successfully gotten the ability to wire tap it. So they're
listening it and the higher ups are like, there's nothing
in this conversation. They didn't say anything illegal. They're speaking
in code. There's nothing here, right, you're just making it up.
So you know, of course, when he gets back, the
pressure's mounted. You know, the higher ups are saying telling
him to drop it. He's unwilling to and so as
you know, obviously he's been seeing this Chinese reporter even
though his wife kind of kicked him out. When they finally,
you know, meet back up, right, she basically says like,
I'm done. You know, you're running around with a woman
who's ten years younger. I don't have much time. I
can't afford to go waste it on you. And lest
you think that is going to be a scene where
two characters talk without something interesting happening, she goes into
the bathroom. He's talking to her through the door, She's crying,
and then all of a sudden, more sort of random
New wave Asians kick down the door with garroats and
grab Mickey Rourke grab his wife very brutally kill his wife.
He you know, fights one of them off, shoots him,
you know, goes into the drawer, picks out a gun,
chases him out the front door, and shoots him through
the rear glass. Like he sees brains all over the
front and his childhood best friend apparently lives next door.
He runs out with a shotgun, right and as they're
chasing down this little side street, the f body, the
f body, Kamara I think, hits the end of the block.
It just erupts into an explosion can full on eighties
car explosion and.
Speaker 1: Sorry well and making Rourke like runs to the explosions.
It pulled the body out while his while his friend
is like Stanley, Stanley, stop, you can't what are you doing?
Because he's wasted what you can do? So he's evidence,
he's evidence.
Speaker 2: And again there are multiple parts like this movie's not
a comedy, Like there's not a lot of jokes in
it per se, but it is really funny. And one
of the funniest shots is, you know, he's dragging the
body over and he's like bent over and picks himself
up out of the bottom of the shot. He's like smoking,
covered in soot, like his jacket's on fire. It's just
a like if the movie were like at a slightly
different tone, it would be like roll out of your
seat hilarious, Like it's a very funny movie. Uh.
Speaker 1: One thing I noticed about that scene where he goes
to talk to his wife and they both end up
getting attacked and she ends up getting freakin' her throat slit.
He's wearing his he's wearing his military jacket, and he
wears his military jacket for the rest of the movie.
It's almost like a signal that like he's going now
it's war. It's like it's just going to be a
battle from here on out. And I thought that was
something I picked up on just I mean, I've probably
seen the movie ten times. I just picked up on
that this last time because I was watching you know,
we're going to do this, So I was watching it
for little things to see if there was anything I
could pick up on. But another thing in this movie,
and I will say this because this movie was made
in It was released in nineteen eighty five, which means
it was made in eighty three or eighty four the Chinese.
They keep mentioning their friends in Toronto, so if you
think Canada was just invaded by Chinese in the last
ten years, I think again, they're basically telling you in
this movie movie forty years ago, and yeah, yeah, Chinese
are already taking over Canada. The Chinese are already in Canada.
Speaker 2: The next scene in the nightclub is probably the best
scene in the movie. It's such an awesome scene because obviously,
you know, as you've said, and I did pick out
that he was wearing his military jacket, because when he's
sitting down talking to his wife, you have a chance
to actually look at him, and obviously it's not you know,
it's not his police uniform, it's not his long kind
of detective's overcoat. So he's mad, right, He's going after
this guy. So he goes into this nightclub, and again,
as we've said, this is full on new wave. We've
got like dyed hair, crazy makeup, people wearing like fishnets.
And he just walks in and starts beating the hell
out of him, and he drags him into a bathroom.
You know, there's bouncers behind him, there's other kind of
you know, criminals following him in there, and in a
very kind of what would be a stock action movie moment.
He's punching him through stall doors in the bathroom, but
every single stall has like four people in it, all
doing drugs. It's like every time he punches him through
a door, it's like some girl like snorting coke, and
there's like a guy in a suit like pulling his
pants up. Like the every it's there's like four stalls,
and you know, eventually like more people come in. Someone
pulls out a gun. It's these two girls. I think,
you know, his one of the other policemen, I think
is running in to bride back up. He gets gut shot,
but you know, our main character basically chases them. They
start booking it out of there. At the club, everything's
going crazy, like the music's pounding. He's chasing them through
New York. They're trading bullets, and he just flasts this
woman like she gets basically like hit by a car,
spun around. She's lying out like on the on the pavement,
reading or last and he just looked over at her
and I don't know the exact line, but he basically
is like tells her like you're gonna die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, You're gonna die, honey. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's so incredibly like it's it's very cold, and I
think it's safe to say that Mickey Rooke's character is
not what we would define as a good person in
this movie, but it is super entertaining.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, the the whole thing with him is is
that it's just he's kind of if he's kind of
the idea of the cop that if you have, like
a an area of the city that has been absolutely
taken over and is being run by a you know,
by a mob, he's the kind of guy who you
would want to go in there and he could get
the job done. Yeah. The problem is is that it's
just decades and decades and decades of people not doing anything.
So nobody wants to the police don't want to do anything,
the mayor doesn't want to do anything, the chief of
police doesn't want to do anything. So he's I mean,
he's making this up as he goes along. He doesn't
really have any idea what he's doing. He's he's basically
doing like I said earlier, he's basically doing what Joey's
doing is he's trying to create as much chaos as
he possibly can, and he thinks if he creates enough chaos,
it will be able to bring bring him down. And yeah,
and I guess shortly after this is the he figures
this is when Joey figures out that there's a wire there,
and he lines up everybody who works in the UH
in the restaurant in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, if you're wondering the exact moment,
when I texted you, it was this lineup. He sai,
I'm like, I know, it's like obviously I know that,
like this kid they pulled out, who isn't on screen much.
He's one of the guys in the restaurant, but when
they're lining him up until the camera focuses, I was like,
I mean, it beats me. I don't know what you
want of them ask the wire up?
Speaker 1: And you know it just you see at that point
that Harry cannot he's not ready for the street, he's
not ready for undercover. He can't keep as cool. It's
obvious who it's obvious who the outsider is. It's obvious
who is who the who's planted the bug. And so
after that you see Harry he's leaving the restaurant that
they're in and he's walking across the street and you
see someone run up behind him. Now, I know you're
not really good with Chinese faces, but did you notice
who the who ran up and shot Harry was?
Speaker 2: No? I didn't, of course not.
Speaker 1: It was that kid who they page the two kids
in the beginning. Now he's like, now he's like a
full fla. I've killed two people, now I can now
I can go kill a cop basically, and he shoots
him in the I mean he shoots him in the
face like a couple of times. He shoots him like
it might be a through and through through the cheeks,
both cheeks, but I mean, it's just fucked up. And
like we find out that Stanley is just like right
down the street because that's where they're running the wire
from and everything. And he runs up to get the UH,
to get the information from him because it turns out
that Harry's UH found out where how the uh the
opium the heroine's coming in.
Speaker 2: Well, and this is I forgot to mention this. One
of the best background characters in this whole film is
the person translating what they're hearing over the wire. It's
two nuns, one of whom is Chinese. The other one's
like a ninety year old woman and the way we were
introduced to her is she's just harassing Mickey Rourke for
eating meat. And then he's like like, what you're old,
You're gonna die soon, and she just rattles off like
all of her like her blood pressure, her hemoglobin, like
all this stuff. Just a very funny background character. And
every time they're on the and it's, you know, like
you've seen this scene before. It's the hard boiled detectives.
You the signal cuts in there like gosh shit, and
then he looks over to the call sorry sister, but
she obviously in the very dramatic moment, but she is
there reading last rites. Well, he's trying to get you know,
from this from this guy with the wire, you know,
basically you know, the information like what boat is the
heroine coming in on? So in between I should have
mentioned this. I saw this movie, like I finished it,
you know, a couple hours ago, so to be fair,
I have a few things out of order. But we
find out that again, you know, White has been using
this Chinese reporter and the moment where she's finally done
with him is she comes back to her place after
he's invited himself over and realizes that he has set
up a full like investigation in her house, like there's
other people she doesn't know, including this kid who is
you know, killed for wearing no wire another kind of
like old timey h New York cop and they have
a massive blowout where she kicks him out. But one
of the funniest interactions is an interaction between you know
him and the kid where he's basically, you can't treat
her like that, like she's her family were aristocrats, Like
she's not gonna put up with that. Then he decides
to quit. He's like, you can't. You can't just keep
calling me like Harry the Chinaman. Apparently that doesn't like Rourke,
kind of gets him back on side again. This movie
is just constant racism throughout the whole thing. The point
is so for in his his dying words, he under
stands like, Okay, this is where you know, this is
the ship that it's coming in on. And his Chinese
girlfriend has kicked him out. But because she is in
on the investigation, she goes after, she goes after Johnny, right,
she knows extra information and so she's bugging. He's trying
to get into this, you know Mercedes and she's like,
why were you in Thailand? Do you know anything about
white powder? Ma? And he basically says like, oh, I
know your sources. I'll speak to legal And what he
actually does is send a bunch of thugs over to
you know, rough her up, right, And that goes back
to what we were talking about earlier, right where you know,
White is more upset that his ability to use her
as part of this investigation has been harmed than the
fact that this woman has been like, you know, pretty
savagely abused, which again, right, think you weren't just he's
playing a psycho in this. Actually one thing forgot, speaking
of Mickey Rourke chewing the scenery is his ex wife's funeral.
Speaker 1: It was so that part is so over the top, Okay,
so I don't know. It's one of the parts of
the movie that like bothers me, not like it's like
I wouldn't have done it. Where he's there trying to
grieve and the Chinese reporter is like there at the door,
like trying to report on what's happening, but also looking
at him grieving and having being sort of upset that
he's grieving over someone that he's you know, over his
wife and someone he's known since they were like little kids.
And she yeah that, like I said, she's like my
least favorite character in the movie. And at that point
she is exceptionally annoying, and it's just like, yeah, can
we just please Joey kill her any plays, let's get
her out of the way.
Speaker 2: So we're building to write this big crescendo, write the showdown.
And he goes and talks to the port authority. They're
having none of it, not interested. They're like, what do
you want me to do? You're search an entire container ship.
We don't have the time, you don't have a living
witness to attest to this, so, you know, pound sand
and so basically, with no real support, Mickey Rourke goes in.
And this is not he is not looking to arrest
anyone here. He is looking to kill Joey. And so
again more over the top like craziness. Joey's driving in right,
you know, we see him talking to some other guys.
Speaker 1: When he gets in the car with his pimp buddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And as he goes to like circle the
block or something, maybe Rourke gets into like a sixty
mile an hour head on collision, comes out with a gun,
tells the you know, the pimp to beat it, and
then they get into a fight. Someone's hand gets blown open,
like right through the middle of the pall the gore
in this. If you're the kind of psycho that you
know is into that is really good. Like they're doing
good practical effects in this. And they just start he
just starts chasing him. They're going down train tracks. And
I don't want to say it's the most over the
top moment in the movie, but it's gotta be pretty
close the climac the way that this fight concludes. Do
you want to describe it, Pete.
Speaker 1: Well, first they start, Joey starts trying to drive across
a train bridge, of course, and and and Mickey Rourke
is chasing behind him, and of course the train starts
coming so that he has to back all the way up.
And then they he jumps out of the car. They
jump out of the car, and now Joey starts running
across the bridge. Mickey Rourke is shoe now with his
left hand because he just had his right hand shot
all the way through. And they're just shooting at each
other and they're screaming at each other, and they're like,
they're like they've gone fucking native. They're just like they're
not even human anymore in the way they're screaming at
each other. And you know, finally he gets the better
of Joey even though he's been shot. And then I mean,
did you expect Joey to do exactly what he did? Oh,
by the way, Mickey Rourke, of course has a desert eagle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: It's it's like, were you carrying that? What are you
doing here? No?
Speaker 2: No, no, very serious green berets. When they plan a
bombing of Trump Tower and a tesla full of fireworks,
they use desert eagles, you know, a very serious.
Speaker 1: Gun because he must have got that from Joey tie.
Because that's when they're standing, they're like on their knees
looking at each other, and Joey asked for his gun
because he's had a bullet, and Joey just puts it
under his chin and blows the top of his fucking
head off.
Speaker 2: And that's yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you we see that they're doing the same
thing that they always do in Shinatown. They're having a
walking they're having their kind of funeral thing where they
have his.
Speaker 2: Story back to the beginning of the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's just exactly the way the film started.
And the reporter is they're covering it and fucking Stanley
shows up, runs into the fucking crowd of people and
just we have to arrest these people. I mean, he's
just losing his shit and they just start beating the
lifting hell.
Speaker 2: Out of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the freaking reporter. Like finally, I think she
were supposed to believe that she tore everybody off of
him while he's on the ground, and you know, they
they walk away together off into the rising sunset. And
another thing is like her last line is Stanley, You're
really cracked. It's just such a terrible, like B movie
kind of eighties line. This is another reason why, God,
I hate her character so much. But I mean, her
character is important to the whole plot. But do you
have something on the ending there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously this is a really fun movie,
and we talked about a lot of what happened. There's
things that we didn't just for the sake of time,
and also, like you know, if you wanted to understand
the plot of the movie in over an hour watch
the movie, you know, don't listen to two guys talking
about it. But obviously you have the element that this
is this is cyclical, right, Chinatown is still there. You
know that the forces that created you know, this whole
situation are still there. Yeah, this this guy, you know, Tie,
he burned out. But it's just like that, like it
is cyclical. You know, despite all of Mickey Rourke's efforts,
nothing systemic.
Speaker 1: Somebody's saying, somebody's taking over the hope that the opium
is still going to be coming in, the girls are
still going to be prostituted, and the gambling is going
to continue. Nothing is going to change.
Speaker 2: And apparently there is no stronger bond between a mentally
unhinged racist and his non white girlfriend. The mactagary divimtagary.
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