Revenge of the Green Dragons a Martin Scorsese Production

Revenge of the Green Dragons—You die now!

Crimeziners who are fans of subtitled “foreign” films will no doubt have seen Andrew Lau classic Infernal Affairs. Crimezine chum Marty Goodfellas Scorsese liked it so much he remade it as Oscar-winning The Departed.

Scorsese is credited as Executive Producer on Revenge of the Green Dragons, which may give the impression to many that this is somehow a Marty movie. Unfortunately it is not. What we are dealing with here is a cult style Chinese movie with English dialogue. If it worked with the Departed, why not here?

“There’s a storm coming detective, and I don’t know of any umbrellas that will keep this city dry,” Quite. It is clear from an early stage that Marty has thrown a fat pile of cash and his best wishes behind this movie and not much more. Meanwhile, Scorsese pal Ray Liota turns up half way through the movie, looking antsy and bloated, in the kind of glorified cameo he specializes in. But he appears bored and apologetic throughout.

Revenge of the Green Dragons. Is based on the story of a real-life retro street gang—the kind of “terrifying” and “merciless” criminals who had middle class America squealing with fear and disbelief before the current crop of Islamic-based criminals came on the scene.

Sonny (Justin Chon) and Steven (Kevin Wu) are two Chinese-American brothers from Brooklyn who find themselves embroiled in the world of the Green Dragons street gang. It doesn’t matter how hard you shout at these nice young men, they are not going to listen. They are quite determined to hammer their square-peg lives into the round hole of street-murder, gang-banging and heroin-dealing. A déjà-vuish demise of such copybook proportions you really wonder how they didn’t see it coming.

Fans of grisly slow-motion murders—headshots, torture, mom-rape, and lovingly filmed knife wound close-ups will not be disappointed. There are also very many patented Bruce Lee, crazed-face-of death-you-die-now expressions pulled by each and every interchangeable bad guy at all the appropriate moments.

There is a half-hearted racism/immigration theme  here, but this seems to have been rather clumsily trowled into the plot as an afterthought.

Naturally it all ends badly, and with a great deal of unintentional ennui—But you already knew that didn’t you Crimeziners?

 

Crimezine does cocaine with Martin Scorsese

Cocaine glamorous, surely not?

Martin Scorsese has done cocaine before. He did it in the crimetastic 1990 masterpiece Goodfellas based Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, a book loosely based on the life and crimes of Lucchese crime family foot soldier Henry Hill.

Now, the diminutive Director is doing it again, this time in The Wolf of Wall Street a film based on the life and crimes of rogue stockbroker and professional asshole Jordon Belfort. This is no mean achievement, as Belfort’s book on which the film is based, is as cretinous and self-serving slice of drivel you are ever likely to read. Heavy larded with profanity, this semi-literate litany of stupidity is an A-Z glorification of vice and depravity in all its forms. “Oh goody” we hear you cry, Vice and depravity are the cornerstones of any successful weekend. But wait, there is more. This story, offers a distasteful glamorization of drugs and greed and demonstrates an understanding of the needs of women that falls somewhere between a gangster rapper and a priapic teenager.

But stop— We also get amusing anecdotes, smashed cars and helicopters, a sunken super yacht and more drug addled shenanigans than a night out with Ozzy Osbourne. And that means cocaine—lots of cocaine, in every scene, on every available surface, up every available nose and orifice and it is fun, fun, fun—at least that is what The Wolf of Wall Street would have us believe. Forget the swindled seniors, forget the monetary malfeasance and the spiral of personal tragedy—because glamorous Leonardo DiCaprio [Wolfie] and Jonah Hill, [as loudmouthed sidekick Donnie Azoff,] are the Laurel and Hardy of drugs & debauchery. What harm can come from such sleazy cinematic nonsense?

According to the United Nations, the global cocaine trade generates $92 billion per year, $20 billion more than the combined revenues of Microsoft, Kellogg’s and McDonald’s. The cocaine trade has destabilized national economies throughout Southern and Central America, causing a crisis of corruption at every level of government and law enforcement. The drug is largely responsible for the epidemic growth of Narco-trafficking and the emergence of the new breed of ruthless of super cartels who have murdered tens of thousands of people in order to ply their trade. In Mexico alone, there have been 47,515 Narco murders during the past two years.

For most cocaine users, Mexico and the Narco nations of South America seem very far removed from a weekend tootski. Forget about the decapitated bodies, the machine-gunned innocents and the Narco malaise that infects every level of economic, judicial, and governmental life. It’s just a little something for the weekend right? What harm can it do?

Cocaine permanently damages the heart, the brain, the lungs and the gastrointestinal tract; it can cause heart attack, stroke, intestinal ulcers, kidney failure and permanent sexual dysfunction. Habitual use leads to delusions, hallucinations & paranoia. Cocaine changes not only the chemistry of the brain but its actual physical structure, reordering normal priorities such as the need to eat, sleep, procreate and survive. The drug subjugates these needs, creating only one overriding priority—the need for more cocaine.

Of course naughty Jordon Belfort gets his comeuppance in The Wolf of Wall Street, after many long years stealing from the gullible and foolish and spending his ill-gotten gains on a heady mixture of drugs, hookers and luxury living, he gets a slap on the wrist prison sentence of three years, at what appears to be some kind of health spa/tennis club—if Martin Scorsese’s movie is to be believed.

Meanwhile, that other Scorsese stoner Henry Hill star of Goodfellas became a government fink, went straight and joined the witness protection program, living life out in the suburbs, to the soundtrack of Sid Vicious’ My Way. Right?

Not really. Hill got kicked off program due to his continued criminal activity and addiction to cocaine and other drugs. By his own admission, Hill was not only dealing cocaine during the Goodfellas period, but heroin too. No doubt that fact was missed out of the screenplay, as heroin—it’s not that sexy, is it Crimeziners?

Welcome to Club Fed Mr. Wolf

Meanwhile, 50% of the US prison population is drug related. Almost 800,000 people incarcerated due to drug use, that is a $40billon cost to the US taxpayer last year alone, and the problem is increasing exponentially. Add the fact that Mexican cartels who murder an average of 50 people a day—every day, are importing 90% of cocaine into the United States and that little tootski at the weekend doesn’t seem like such good value does it?

As cocaine use is virtually unheard of in Hollyweird, Crimezine is certain that Mr. Scorsese and his lawyers have never “done” cocaine themselves. If however you are looking for a “good hit” this weekend, we would encourage you to see Scorsese’s new movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Consider it a cautionary tale.

http://www.thewolfofwallstreet.com/

http://jordanbelfort.com/blog/

http://www.amazon.com/Cocaine-Unauthorized-Biography-Dominic-Streatfeild/dp/B00D9TIQZ0

Crimezine is crazy about Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters

Headhunters

Jo Nesbø is the hot new Norwegian crime commodity, and in the massive vacuum that has been left by the death of Stieg, Girl with a Dragon Tattoo Larsson, it would seem that sick-puppy superstar Jo Nesbø is the only man with a crazy enough back catalogue of work to fill the Hollyweird demand for Scandinavian crime.

Jo Nesbø is rightly famous for his marvelous Harry Hole series and Martin Scorsese is currently turning Nesbø’s serial-killing Snowman book into what will no doubt be a top flight Hollywood money spinner.

Meanwhile subtitle loving Crimeziners will be able to get a preliminary taste of Nesbø’s penchant for gruesome craziness in the new Norweigian film Headhunters.

Headhunters is Nesbø’s first standalone work—so no Harry Hole this time out Crimeziners, but corporate crook Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) more than makes up for this.

Roger is living a double life: He is Norway’s most accomplished headhunter by day, while secretly he is a high-end art thief, struggling to subsidize a life he cannot afford. When Roger’s beautiful gallery owner wife introduces him to a former mercenary with a priceless Rubens painting, our hero just cannot help himself.

This is a gloriously gruesome European crime romp. Think Carl Hiassen Patricia Highsmith and maybe a touch of Chuck Phalahnuick for an end result that is total Nesbø. Crimezine recommends this film whole-heartedly. See it now before it gets remade by Hollyweird marketeers.

http://www.magpictures.com/headhunters/

http://jonesbo.com/

Crimezine pounces on The Leopard, by Jo Nesbø

The Leopard: Grusome

Here comes The Leopard, by hot shot flavor of the month—the Nebuchadnezzar of Nordic Noir, Jo Nesbø.

Now Mr Nesbø, is the author of the serial killer schlocker The Snowman, which is not exactly Crimezines cup of fijord flavored hot-fondue. But legendary filmmaker Martin Score-sleazy is in disagreement, and he has decided to make The Snowman into a movie [As Exclusively reported in Crimezine] Well, hurrah to that! We are sure Marty will tune up the story considerably.

Crimezine has been impressed by previous Nesbø efforts, The Devils Star and The Red Breast and we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend these tales to Crimeziners everywhere.

Why then should The Leopard be any different? We hear you ask. Well— fans of films such as The Saw, Final Destination and the charming Hostel series, will no doubt love this book.

But for others, this bloated shock fest of serial killer torture and mindless splatter core pukiness will have you chocking into a barf-bag after page four, and this gory-borey tome is five hundred —count ’em—pages long.

No doubt you will hear marketeers try and convince you that Jo Nesbø is the new Stieg, Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Larson. This is not true. He is Thomas Harris with a chainsaw and a tool-kit full of sharpened screwdrivers.

So what of the story? Well, Harry Hole has made an opium-smoking sojourn to Hong Kong, after his gruesome encounter with The Snowman, only to be persuaded back to Norway by the piranha toothed Kaja, who tells him his father is dying. What follows is a web of inane chat, dumb gags and half-baked memories, from touchy feely childhoods, that it’s hard to give a damn about.

Layered throughout this, we get a collection of gruesome torture killings seemingly related to a meeting at a ski-lodge. Confusion reigns. The plot is by turn nonsensical, then preposterous, and just when you think respite is heading your way, Harry heads to the Congo, where further scenes of carnage ensue: rape, gore, genocide, mutilation. But all is not lost Crimeziners. Heroic Harry Hole rushes to the rescue, saving the innocents who are the subject of his mission of mercy from death in a fiery Volcano. We kid you not. We hoped Tarzan would swing in to cheer things up. Unfortunately he never did.

Jo Nesbø can do much better than this, his public expects it and so does Crimezine.

 

Martin Scorsese makes a Snowman

Scorsese: I want a carrot nose and twigs for arms…

We kid you not Crimeziners legendary Director Martin Scorsese is returning to the crime genre with an adaptation of Thriller The Snowman by Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø. The Snowman is the seventh book in the fijord fancying writers hardboiled Harry Hole series.

Hole is a Maverick cop tasked with catching a fiendish serial killer, who leaves a snowman at crime scenes. We know, it’s not exactly Goodfella’s is it Crimeziners? Are we to expect cable knit sweaters and fijord flavored hot fondue too?

Scorsese has made comment recently regarding his disappointment that his young kids cannot see his films, hence the mucho out of character Hugo. Perhaps the Snowman idea will follow in this vein?

Kidult entertainment is the next big thing after all. Even Harlan Coben has come out with a Kidult crime book recently. His new book Shelter features the adventures of Myron Bolitar’s naughty nephew Mickey. Crimezine hasn’t found the opportunity to read it loud at bedtime however, as we know the bloodthirsty kidults of our acquaintance are eagerly awaiting the video game.

Still we digress. Jo Nesbø is the latest Scandanavian writer to break big, in what is rapidly becoming a crime wave tsunami of fijordish crime fiction, there is also Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell and of course Girl with the Dragon Tattoo creator Steig Larsson.

The word on Hollyweird Boulevard is that Mathew Michael Carnahan is writing The Snowman script, hot on the heels of his work on Zombie flick World War Z featuring Brad Pitt. Though how much actual script writing was needed on this picture, one has to wonder…

Still, Scorsese is the man as far as Crimezine is concerned and we look forward with baited breath, to the emergence of his new crime masterpiece. We know it will have Crimeziners everywhere—walking in the air—chortle.