In 2006, Martin Scorsese finally collected a long overdue Best Director statue for helming The Departed, an American remake of Andrew Lau’s acclaimed Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs. Eight years later, Scorsese has returned the favor by adding some much-needed pedigree to Lau’s second English language film, Revenge of the Green Dragons. Unfortunately, Marty’s illustrious name does little to save such a miserable crime saga away from the bottom feeders.
Inspired by true events, Revenge of the Green Dragons follows the Reagan-era rise of two young Chinese-American immigrants: Sonny (The Twilight Saga’s Justin Chon) and Steven (YouTube® star Kevin Wu). As teens, the boys are shepherded into the infamous Green Dragons gang and soon win favor and superiority among its members by killing folks, stealing their cash, killing more folks and acting all other kinds of reckless around Queens’ Chinatown.
To the audience’s benefit, the film moves quick – but proves a disadvantage to a film that needs less characters and a little bit more development on its main players.
The boys journey through the Chinatown underworld is an all too familiar path through alleyways and seedy apartments stacked high with Benjamins, superfluous gunfire over said stacks, and a whole lotta shady loyalty. This is all accented by tedious expository voiceover intended to provide scope and significance. Curiously, it fails to affirm, or even clarify, any of the Green Dragon’s motivations. To the audience’s benefit, the film moves quick – but proves a disadvantage to a film that needs less characters and a little bit more development on its main players.
To call Kevin Wu’s Steven an interesting character would be overstating his performance. However, compared to every other player in the film, he is nearly fascinating. Sporting a curly topped mullet and green school-boy varsity jacket, he is the only character in the film who ponders his own recklessness with an ounce of authenticity. His pal Sonny is quite the opposite. Lacking any physical menace, Justin Chon struggles through the lead, leaving the post-production team to exploit manipulative slow-motion and a score of big-haired, 80’s guitar wails to (de)accentuate nearly all of Sonny’s big moments.
The rest of the cast shouts expletives and terrorizes the neighborhood like middle school hooligans. Revenge of the Green Dragons is essentially an ugly montage of sloppy violence overcompensating for such poor performances, massacring any good story for gun shells. In fact, the film indulges in the Green Dragons criminal revelry with a very uncomfortable callousness, especially when it involves Sonny and Steven as children. At least Ray Liotta eventually sleepwalks into town to lock the Dragons up.
To its credit, Revenge of the Green Dragons almost ends on an innovative and rather timely note regarding America’s place for immigrants and the deceit of the American Dream. This, however, falls right before the film actually ends with a character revelation that falls so flat, it’s embarrassing. By this point, however, Revenge of the Green Dragons has already fallen to the bottom of the action bargain barrel.
