It is 1952, a time of fedora-wearing and straight-up-martini-drinking. It is also a time of McCarthyism, and the FBI is right on the case.
“We’re fightin’ communism,” brags one member of the San Francisco bureau, after which a collegue warns, “Little yellow men are infiltrating our borders.”
No problem. At the top of “Golden Gate,” agent Kevin Walker (Matt Dillon) and partner Ron Pirelli (Bruno Kirby) are assigned to ferret out subversives in Chinatown, and consequently concoct a devious, low-road scheme. A local laundryman, Chen Jung Song (Tzi Ma), who has organized an innocent, benevolent plan to send money to impoverished families back home, is framed for allegedly smuggling funds out of the country and into Red China. Meanwhile, Walker’s girlfriend (Teri Polo) has dumped him (mostly because she is unremittingly high-minded, but partly, one suspects, because he insists on calling her “angel”).
As Song is sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin, his little daughter, Marilyn, is shown looking forebodingly at the FBI agent. The camera lingers on that closeup quite a while, then finally breaks away because it is now 10 years later. Song has been released, and Walker is assigned to run a surveillance on him. This leads the guilt-ridden G-man to begin his tortured, rocky road to redemption, but before he can make amends, the despairing Song leaps into the
Bay.
Upon which Walker meets the very grownup Marilyn Song (Joan Chen), telling her he’s a public defender who got to know her father in prison. After the two “eat cute” in a Chinatown restaurant, they inevitably fall in love. When his true identity is learned, he is dumped again, then it’s fast-forward to 1968, when the FBI sets out to investigate anti-government demonstrations on a Berkeley-type university campus and one of the militant Asian-American protesters happens to be the very same daughter of . . . Never mind.
Directed by John Madden (“Ethan Frome”) and written by David Henry Hwang (creator of the Broadway play “M. Butterfly”), “Golden Gate” is pure brass, Madden’s misguided, self-congratulatory pronouncements to the contrary (“The story is an interesting way to look at the progress of this country over two decades. It covers a broad swath of its history and America’s changing perceptions of her minorities. It’s also a risky film because it uses certain styles that are perhaps more usually associated with theater. But there is a kind of magic in the storytelling that I think is pretty exciting. And, at the end, there’s a kind of spiritual liberation. . . .”)
The reality is, Hwang’s dialogue-narration is pretentious and stilted, and when his characters are not worrying to death the differences between law and justice, they are saying things like, “Some loves are impossible. But they are loves just the same.”
What’s more, the FBI agents are all racist, sexist, fascist pigs, snapping off such sentiments as, “Damn, I hate due process.” The choice of Dillon to play one of them is an egregious example of miscasting. (The sight of Matt Dillon wearing a fedora is worth a few hoots in itself.)
Madden’s direction is not only clumsy but gimmicky; in several sequences, he displays Dillon conducting fantasy conversations, which makes one wonder if this guy should really be a G-man walking around with a weapon. And, since this is San Francisco, Madden tosses in a lot of fog and saxophone music.
Add it all up, and the whole thing seems as phony as the charges brought against that poor laundryman. Some movies are impossible.
”GOLDEN GATE”
(STAR) 1/2
Directed by John Madden; written by David Henry Hwang; photographed by Bobby Bukowski; edited by Sean Barton; music by Elliot Goldenthal; produced by Michael Brandman. A Samuel Goldwyn release; opens Friday at Water Tower, Webster Place and outlying. Running time: 1:30. MPAA rating: R. Strong language, sexual situations.
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THE CAST
Kevin Walker……………………………………..Matt Dillon
Marilyn Song……………………………………….Joan Chen
Ron Pirelli………………………………………Bruno Kirby
Cynthia……………………………………………Teri Polo
Chen Jung Song………………………………………..Tzi Ma