Michael Cimino may be the only movie director in the history of the globe to have achieved the status of a household joke: that was round about the time of Heaven's Gate, if you will remember. (How many households by comparison could have named the director of Howard the Duck?) But The Year of the Dragon five years later went almost unnoticed, except by Chinese-American anti-defamation factions, who weren't laughing. (How fleeting fame can be!) And The Sicilian, though it has had twenty-six minutes or so cut from the European version for its U.S. release, is no joke either. In fact the thought of those potential twenty-some extra minutes is more apt to induce shudders of horror, or even creakings of rigor mortis, than any expressions of mirth. This is about as far as possible on the cinematic spectrum from Francesco Rosi's dry, semi-documentary treatment of the same subject, Salvatore Giuliano. Cimino's treatment is semi-delirious and all-wet, with its waste-motion camera movements, "painterly" lighting, muddily monochromatic color work, soupy atmospherics, among other constant reminders of this director's suffocating love of his craft. Christopher Lambert's matinee-idol posturings and muggings as the notorious Sicilian bandit are good for at least some snorts of derision if not actual delight, but actors have always had an easier time than directors at becoming household jokes. And Joss Ackland also gets his fair share of muffled snufflings, by playing the local Mafia mucky-muck as if he were playing Lee J. Cobb instead. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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