And that is the only way I can describe Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. The film had director Guy Hamilton behind it, who you might remember as being the director of four separate James Bond films, which is a hell of a pedigree and fits perfectly for an espionage action film.
Couple that with the 1980s and the likes of Schwarzenegger and Stallone wielding implausibly big guns and spouting off witty Pre-Mortem One-Liners and you're sure to have an epic film, no?
What? Did my opening paragraph not make that clear?
We start with NYPD cop and Vietnam War veteran Sam Makin (Fred Ward) on patrol through a neighborhood, business as usual. However, he has no knowledge of the fact he's walking right into a trap set by CURE, a secret organization that wants to recruit him to be their next assassin. His death is faked and as the funeral of Sam Makin takes place, "Remo Williams" is born. His face is surgically altered, as are his fingerprints, to give him a whole new identity. And before you start crying about how this is a Robocop rip-off, let me remind you that that came out in 1987 - two years after this film.
Also, this film very quickly moves into definitely-not-Robocop territory.
It's also important to note the origin of Remo Williams. The character's first appearance was not actually in this film, but in The Destroyer series of novels by authors Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, and this film pretty faithfully follows the concept.
Getting back to the plot, "Remo" gets the lowdown from his handler Conn MacCleary (JA Preston) and the head of CURE Harold Smith (Wilford Brimley) about their organization. "Remo" was chosen because he has no connections and thus wouldn't be missed as he was taken in to train as an assassin for CURE - an organization that operates outside of the law in order to see that those who corrupt or pervert the American justice system receive their punishment anyway.
To this end, he is taken to meet Chiun (Joel Grey), a Korean martial arts master. Thus begins Remo's training in the art of "Sinanju", a martial art that is as deadly as it is fictional. All three of the supporting roles play them very well. Grey as Chiun is a purebred and proud Korean who has rather outrageously hilarious moments of sexism and racism (against non-Koreans) and a fondness of soap operas. He's also completely able to defy the laws of physics thanks to being the world's only master of Sinanju.
It's also important to note both Wilford Brimley and JA Preston's roles in the film. As MacCleary, Preston reminds me of a kinder version of "X" from the X-Files, very enigmatic and covert but without being a complete asshole to the person he's helping out. Though I suppose killing a man off and then forcing him to assume and identity is a bit of an asshole move, even if it's for the greater good.
And Wilford Brimley...well, he's Wilford Brimley, no explanation needed. The man is quite believable as the head of a covert chapter of the U.S. Government and you know very well that if Remo steps out of line, Brimley will waste his wise-cracking ass with diabeetus.
Also, rounding out the main cast, we have U.S. Army Major Rayner Fleming (Kate Mulgrew) and Weapons Mogul and Department of Defense contractor George Grove (Charlies Cioffi) as the romantic lead and the villain, respectively. Mulgrew's Fleming is an individual who's in it to do her job as she demonstrates in her opening scene and pretty much follows that through the entire film even to the point of following Remo's rather bizarre and improvised strategies for getting to and taking care of Grove.
Grove, as the villain, is a bloodthirsty businessman who tries to strongarm the military into taking the contract on the new rifles his company has made for them, regardless of the fact that they're defective to the point of killing a soldier during a test exercise. That along with many other crimes that are described in the film by Wilford Brimley's Magical Computer of Exposition, have put him in the sights of CURE and thus Remo.
And so as to not leave the main character out of my short analysis, Remo is exactly what you'd expect from the typical 80s action hero minus the one-liners. He's cocky, snarky, and just plain arrogant to a point, all of which get tempered by his training with Chiun. Though he gets to near superhuman levels, Remo at first is a pretty adequate combatant and is not afraid to use his environments to his advantage, such as a rather tense sequence on the Statue of Liberty (no, really, the poster doesn't lie) where he takes out some thugs sent after him rather creatively.
Of special note is the relationship between Remo and Chiun who are the two characters who share the most screen time. Though Remo is at first reluctant to be taken under the Sinanju Master's wing, they quickly develop a master-student relationship to a point where Chiun is very proud of what Remo has accomplished in such a short time in spite of his handicaps - namely being White and not Korean - and if he were ordered to kill him by CURE, he would do so but would be very disappointed because of that fact. And the fact that it's Remo and Chiun who ride off (on a boat, no less) into the sunset speaks to...needing a rather hilarious line from Chiun to close out the film. But it does show the pair of them, heading off for another adventure...which sadly never got made.
The last twenty minutes or so of the film very much feels like a Bond movie - with the villain putting to use an elaborate death trap for Remo (a gas chamber) and Remo escaping it by ridiculously awesome means (using a henchman's diamond tooth to cut through glass), as well as how the villain is finally dispatched...or how he would be before he survives it and then Remo puts to use his skills in Sinanju to blow up a vehicle using only a twig that he rubs fast enough between his hands to set on fire and a trail of gasoline. Kind of goes from a Bond film to Looney Tunes right there, but it's so ridiculously awesome that I didn't even care.
While this may seem ridiculous in a film, it's important to note that the source material wasn't meant to be taken one hundred percent seriously either. The Destroyer series of novels were actually meant to heavily satire old pulp action adventure novels from the 1930s as well as many other aspects of martial arts, espionage, and politics. Something like that, of course, makes for a perfect 80s action film - a shining jewel in an era of super serious and yet utterly cheese action films.
Sadly, the public in the 80s didn't think so. The film got mixed reviews from critics and didn't do all that well at the box office, though it's since gotten a cult following with video and DVD re-releases that are likely more popular now in an era where we can point back and laugh at the absurdity of the previous years.
However, this doesn't mean that the film had no impact and that the novels wouldn't once more be brought back into the public consciousness through a new adaptation. Apparently, even as we speak, Sony is working on a new version "The Destroyer" with Shane Black helmed to direct it. Though if we get him, I'm cautious because of the fact that he directed Iron Man 3, which was a gigantic pile of shi-oh, wait, I haven't reviewed that yet, have I?
Guess I'll have to get my Marvel retrospective up and running again.
But summing up Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, it's an awesome film. Good action, decent pacing, quotable as all get out, and an all around fun time. What's not to love?
Remo Williams: The Adventure begins is now available from Dick Clark Productions, MGM, and Orion Pictures on DVD and on Netflix Instant Streaming.
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