Year of the Dragon(1985)

One day, while Stanley (Mickey Rourke) is visiting his wife, Connie (Caroline Kava), and trying to salvage their marriage (albeit unsuccessfully), they both come under attack from a couple of thugs working for Joey Tai (John Lone). Stanley ends up killing both men, but not before Connie gets her throat slashed by one of them and dies instantly. After Stanley attends Connie’s funeral with his friend and partner, Lou (Raymond J. Barry), they go to a bar to have a few drinks, where Lou tells him that he had been talking to Connie behind his back in the days leading up to her death and learned from her that she foresaw that she would be killed because of what Stanley has been doing lately. He then dresses down Stanley, telling him that he is fighting the whole world all the time, and he is using his experiences in the Vietnam War as an excuse to trample all over anything and everything. He then explains to Stanley that the cops have an arrangement with the Chinese triads, and however tarnished it is, it works, because it helps bring stability to their city. Stanley then leaves the bar, in parting telling Lou that that arrangement was what got Connie killed.

Stanley makes it a mission to go for Joey’s throat, and he tells his partners Herbert (Dennis Dun) and Angelo (Leonard Termo) that Joey’s latest heroin shipment is presently somewhere between Thailand and New York City and they need to put a wiretap in the office of Joey’s restaurant so they can get whatever information they can about it. Stanley tells Herbert that he wants him to do it, given the fact that he is of Chinese descent and can better infiltrate the restaurant, but Herbert initially turns him down flat, feeling that Stanley is trying to sacrifice him. However, he ultimately agrees to do it, and he is next seen working in Joey’s restaurant as a busboy and (off-screen) manages to get the wiretap put into place. Some days later, Stanley and Angelo listen in on a meeting that Joey is having with the elder Triad members over the wiretap from a nearby building, and after the elders chew Joey out for the reckless behavior he has been displaying lately as leader and how both Stanley and the reporter, Tracy (Ariane), pose a serious threat to them all, Joey tells them that his heroin shipment will be arriving in less than a week, but he won’t tell them what ship it will be coming in on or what shipping company will be used

Just then, the meeting is interrupted by a knock at the door, and the visitor is revealed to be Detective Perez (Jack Kehler), a corrupt cop on Joey’s payroll. They go out onto the top of the staircase leading down into the restaurant’s kitchen, and there, Perez informs Joey that Stanley had a wiretap installed in his office, and though he doesn’t know who did it for him, he is going to find out. Joey tells Perez that he wants nothing to go wrong with this shipment and wants him to be there with him when it arrives, and it will be coming in on the Kazimierz Pulaski at Pier 11 next Tuesday. Herbert overhears all of this at the bottom of the stairs, and soon after, Joey confronts Herbert and the rest of the kitchen staff and studies their faces to see who looks guilty of being an infiltrator, but he apparently seems unable to determine who it is. As Herbert leaves the restaurant later on and tries to catch a taxicab, one of Joey’s men approaches him and shoots him several times in the face and back before fleeing. Stanley runs out of the building where he had been listening to the wiretap and dashes up to the dying Herbert, and Herbert manages to give him part of the ship’s name and the pier it will be arriving at before he passes away. That night, Stanley and Angelo confront Joey at a nightclub, and Stanley starts to beat him up in the bathroom until two armed women working for Joey non-fatally shoot him in the neck and shoot Angelo in the abdomen. They then run off, but Stanley chases after them and ends up shooting and incapacitating one of them while the other successfully escapes. Later that night, Tracy is assaulted and raped by three of Joey’s henchmen in her own apartment, in an effort to scare her away from pursuing the story of Joey’s heroin shipment any further.

The next day, the Triad elders tell Joey that they desire a return to an older and more stable leadership because they have been put in jeopardy by Joey’s youth. However, Joey is able to placate them by personally guaranteeing that each of them will get their share of the heroin shipment, and he adds that he will be at Pier 11 himself when it arrives. Meanwhile, Stanley speaks with a Customs Service officer down at the harbor about the incoming shipment and what ship it will be arriving on, but the officer informs him that the ship is quite large and is carrying copious amounts of various legal items, plus it is the flagship of the Polish government, so he and his fellow officers are not going to tear the ship and cargo apart to look for the drugs on his say-so. Stanley then pays a visit to Tracy at the news station she works at and tells her to come down to Pier 11 tonight with her camera crew to get the conclusion of her story on the drug shipment, but she replies that she can’t go there and has been ordered by her network not to do any more stories about this. Stanley doesn’t buy her explanation and tells her that she needs to lay her butt on the line if she hopes to be a real reporter, prompting her to admit to him that she was raped and then tell him that she is not going to die for him. After he gets her to confess that her rapists were three Chinese guys, Stanley realizes that Joey is responsible for this and vows to kill him.

That night, Joey and his bodyguard arrive at the docks, but as they drive up an alleyway towards the Kazimierz Pulaski, Stanley appears at the other end of it and drives his car straight towards theirs and rams them. He then pulls the two men out and orders Joey to tell him where the heroin is, but then Perez appears in the alleyway in his own car and speeds towards them all with the intention of nailing Stanley. However, Stanley aims his gun at Perez and shoots him in the head with a few rounds, killing him and making his car flip over onto its roof. The bodyguard then grabs hold of Stanley in the confusion, but when Joey tries to shoot and kill Stanley, the bullet winds up killing the bodyguard instead when it goes through Stanley’s right hand and into his head. Joey jumps back in his car and drives off, and Stanley pursues him on foot. Soon after, Joey attempts to escape by driving across a train bridge, but an oncoming train suddenly appears in front of him, and he manages to get out of the car before the train demolishes it. He then tries to run to the other side of the train bridge, but after Stanley shouts out to him a couple of times, he decides to forget about escaping and deal with Stanley once and for all. The two men proceed to run towards each other, firing their guns, and Stanley wins the showdown when two of his shots hit Joey and send him falling to the ground. After Stanley reaches Joey, Joey tells him to give him his gun so he can kill himself with it rather than be arrested. Stanley agrees to accommodate his request, but only if he tells him where the heroin is on the Kazimierz Pulaski. After Joey tells him that it is all stored in a Mercedes car, Stanley hands him his gun, and Joey shoots himself in the head.

In the next scene, a funeral is being held for Joey in Chinatown, but Stanley comes storming into the funeral procession – with Lou right behind him – intending to arrest all of the Triad members present. A big scuffle soon erupts between him, Lou, the police officers on the scene, the Triad members, and the reporters covering the funeral (including Tracy), but Stanley is rescued from the crowd by Lou and Tracy and they help him up to his feet. Stanley apologizes to Tracy for how he has acted towards her ever since they first met and tells her that he really wants to be a nice guy, and they share a kiss before walking away together.