Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)

Just perfect...

A Disappointing Continuation

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Blistering performances.

After Burton's Batman, Hollywood wanted tentpole movies that could make sequel after sequel. So why not turn to men's paperbacks, like The Destroyer, a series of 152 books written by the team of Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir (as well as some ghostwriters) that have 30 million books in print?Sam Makin (Fred Ward, The Right Stuff) was a tough New York City cop who died in the line of duty before being resurrected as Remo Williams, now the CURE organization's front man in the war against the enemies of the United States. Now with a new face, no fingerprints and training in the assassination skill known as Sinanju from the Korean martial artist Chiun (Joel Grey, who is not Asian and is actually a Jewish man from Cleveland), Remo is ready to battle corrupt weapons dealers and save Kate Mulgrew's military officer character.I've been begging Becca to watch this movie for years and she responded to it by asking, "Was this a real movie or one of those ones you like that no one knew about?" It was an actual movie. Maybe people didn't care as much as me, because in 1985 I was fully into The Destroyer thanks to Marvel publishing a black and white comic book version.Watching this film years later, it's weird how little happens. "Are they ever going to do anything or is this the entire movie?" my wife asked. "This is his origin story," I tried to say, but she's right. For all the amazing things Remo learns to do, he gets to do very little of them.But hey - Wilford Brimley is great as Remo's boss, Harold Smith. And Michael Pataki is always a welcome face in a film. There's enough to like in this one, like cameos by Reginald VelJohnson (Die Hard) and William Hickey (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation).This was intended to be a blue-collar James Bond. Which makes sense, once you realize that they used Bond screenwriter Christopher Wood (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker) and Bond director Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun).Sadly, there was a 1988 TV spinoff of the movie that never made it past the pilot stage, starring Jeffrey Meek as Remo and Roddy McDowall as Chiun (who was British and also not Asian).

Fred Ward stars as a cop who's death is faked by a super-secret government agency run by Wilford Brimley. He is given a new identity and told he's now an assassin who kills people the justice system cannot deal with. He's trained by a Korean martial arts master played by Joel Grey ... yes, Joel Grey. This movie is based on the popular "Destroyer" series of pulp novels. It was meant to kick off a series of james Bond-esque movies. It didn't. Did it deserve to fail? Yeah ... kind of. What works works very well. It's funny at times, the cast is good and some sequences, particularly the Statue of Liberty sequence, are amazing. What doesn't work is that it's 85% set up and training montage and almost no real story. Most of the plot is established through scenes of Brimley sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen. If it had got the setup and training sequences out of the way in the first 3rd and focused the rest on story and action ... the adventure may have continued.

I like this movie, mostly for its smart-assery and tongue-in-cheekery. But I think that Fred Ward is the only actor who was properly cast; Wilford Brimley, maybe, but I found something dissatisfying with his role (although real-time video on a computer monitor was an enjoyably accurate prediction). Joel Grey, although his comic timing was impeccable, was a disaster in my opinion.Watching this movie, I get the feeling that the producers seriously misunderestimated their audience. Too often they served up hamburger in scenes where moviegoers needed steak to work up an appetite for the franchise that was obviously intended. Still, it's a pleasant fantasy and fun to watch.

A "dead" police officer finds himself recruited into a tiny and secretive organisation which seeks to fight the criminals that the justice system cannot reach. Renamed Remo Williams, the officer is trained in ancient martial arts by master Chiun while Harold Smith using his impressively connected computer system to track the actions of George Grove – a connected and powerful man in the military but also incredibly corrupt. With Remo still in training, Grove's men start to get close to Smith's operation, forcing Williams to move quickly to bring down Smith before he can get to them.Recently a colleague of mine was watching some old 80's movies and asked for some DVD's if I had any. My contribution was Breakin' and the sequel (Electric Boogaloo) because he suggested he wanted cheesy and "bad" films. In return he lent me Remo Williams – a film that rang bells because I can dimly recall seeing it about 15 years ago on a Friday night on BBC1. I watched it again of course but I did so preparing myself for a "bad" film. Sure, the internet is full of praise for it but I assumed that was on the basis of it being a "cult" film – fans of any "cult film" generally not being the best people to get advice from in regards the actual quality of the film. The knowledge that this didn't lead to any film sequel and that a TV pilot flopped as well didn't change my mind either.What a great surprise then to find that, while not being a really good film, it is certainly not a bad one either. "Solid" perhaps doesn't do it justice either but it is a robust piece of fun entertainment for viewers happy to just go with it and get the entertainment value from it. Indeed I did enjoy it – and not just in a "this is so silly" way that I expected to (although parts were) – I actually enjoyed it for what it did. The majority of the film is the introduction and the training sections and the final third is Remo's first target. The first two parts of the film really set it up well. It produces one great set piece that was actually shot on the Statue of Liberty and serves as a well-shot and exciting section but also a nice nod to Hitchcock in its use of monuments. It also has a great sense of fun – nobody is taking it too seriously and it allows some of the sillier stuff to work for what it is without it detracting from the material; hence, for example, guard dogs managing to keep up with Remo is "funny" rather than "dumb".The final third of the film is not quite as good but only because the plot is a bit clunky and it does lose a certain amount of its energy. It is still good but it is carried a little bit by the superior first two thirds. The film benefits greatly from several good pieces of casting. Fred Ward is a tough and likable character who works best in b-movie hero type role (see also Tremors for future proof). His square jaw, good looks and charisma hold him in good stead here. Wilford Brimley does the role he has done for decades now (while looking more or less the same) and he is a crotchety good support. Grey's character could maybe be seen as non-PC but it is such a comic turn that it is easy to ignore this. His master personae is so wonderfully clichéd and filled with nonsense (the constant posing, the daytime soaps etc) that he contributes to the sense of fun in the film. The problems in the cast are part of the ending being weaker. Mulgrew is unnecessary while Cioffi is not at all what was required – he never seems to be a threat and he is only made to look worse by the presence of the ever-menacing Patrick Kilpatrick. Outside of the cast direction is actually pretty good. OK some scenes play very wooden and a bit daft but the set pieces look great and are well filmed. Likewise the theme music is great fun.Overall Remo Williams is not what you have heard – mainly because you have probably either heard it is brilliant or that it is rubbish and, in some cases, may have heard both at the same time from the same viewer. The truth is that it is actually a pretty solid movie produced with good set-pieces, a great sense of fun, solid performances in key places and an engagingly rough charm that matches that of Ward. It is nonsense but it is fun and quite thrilling nonsense and I really enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Oh, and retrospectively now I can bore people by saying that this did "bullet time" decades before The Matrix did.