Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)

the audience applauded

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.

With a title like that its gotta be an 80's action flick, you just don't get titles like that anymore huh. Based around some popular pulp stories which are themselves quite dated now (early 70's), this film was apparently meant to be the first part in a franchise which never came to be. I remember watching this as a kid and loving it, had it recorded on VHS and used to rewatch it over and over. Looking back now I'm not really sure why, despite the fact the film was released in 85 you'd think it was 75 because my God its so quaint and dated looking! The whole gist of the thing is pretty much your light-hearted James Bond angle mixed with a dash of 'The Karate Kid' really. A top NY cop has his death faked unwillingly so this undercover government agency can recruit and train him to be a killing machine. The funny bit is he is trained up by this 'Mr Miyagi' type character which you may think is me just using that cliché...but I'm totally not. Only difference is this Mr Miyagi is from Korea and is played by an American in heavy, yet very good makeup...racial issues cast aside!The film isn't a violent film at all despite the assassination theme at the core of the films story. Remo is a highly skilled ex-Marine and thusly was chosen to be an undercover agent, but like some Bond flicks the violence is minimal and what there is has been edited so you don't see much. In this sense it almost feels like a spy movie for kids or young teens, that along with the cringeworthy humour that has been injected into the film for whatever reason. Most of that humour comes from Mr Miyagi (yes that's what I'm gonna call him) as he behaves in the same uber spiritual, disciplined way with little dialog but lots of cheeky philosophical quips. That is countered by Remo, played with much swagger by Fed Ward, who at first is of course cocky, loud mouthed and rebellious to his instructions...whilst being clumsy accident prone and the butt of many Miyagi quickfire put downs and movements. Together they make a cute couple and it is amusing watching the absurd techniques used to train Remo...which he manages to conquer quite quickly. Dodging bullets huh we don't actually see how he is trained for that but he manages to do it in the end, ditto running on liquid or soft material.Its a strange action film truth be told because it never really feels like an action film. Most of what we see is dialog between characters, either the good guys who are always snooping around and planning, or the bad guys who are always driving around in black limos and also planning. The action we get is very tepid and short lived, the only real thrill is seeing Remo fight against some construction workers atop the Statue of Liberty (did the bad guys actually just pay some blue collar workers to kill someone they don't know by booting them off the top of the Statue of Liberty?? who would accept that? surely you'd get the sack for gross misconduct lol!). The stunts are very good throughout the film I can't deny, its all very Bond-ish as said, but the film does rely on those stunts to get it through the run time, not much else going on.The whole final act set within this forested military base is very dull, more dull than the rest of the film! Again there are stunts here and there which are reasonably impressive but its hardly epic, what the hell was that log on a cable thing? what was that?!. We never really see Remo using any of his special skills until right at the very end, we never really understand who and what CURE are suppose to be or do accept eliminate people they think are bad, plus there are only three members of CURE including Remo?!I can't complain about how unbelievably old this looks (it is really really dated!), but I can moan about how boring and daft it is. I'm not really sure if it was meant to be an adult franchise, I don't know anything about the books but I'm kinda guessing its more for the older person? really can't tell with this film though. It swings from sweaty palm thrills (no don't even go there) to a sniff of actual possible visible violence to complete childish tomfoolery, all this set around some of the most mundane looking sets and locations you've ever seen (apart from Liberty Island). Plus points for Ward who is good fun as the bent nosed tough guy Remo, Grey as Mr Miyagi and a very early role for Kate 'Captain Janeway' Mulgrew who actually looks quite tasty. Man I tried to enjoy this, believe me I did, it was a part of my childhood...but the rose tinted lenses have been sat on by a popcorn scoffing troglodyte.5/10

Step in the WayBack machine, Sherman, and come with me to the 1970s. Before computers. People used to get their entertainment from something called "books" and these were sold in something called "bookstores." Also drugstores, variety stores, airports. Within the realm of books, there were two main classes. Mainstream. And speciality. Specialty did not get a lot of a attention, it was in effect, the "dirty little secret" of the industry but it was massively profitable if a title or series took off. Which brings us to the Destroyer series, originally started by Warren Murphy (in this case NOT writing with his wife, but a third party). It arrived without much fanfare and was intended for the same audience that made, for example, the Executioner series a hit. But, as Murphy himself would later reveal, he just couldn't do it, he could write it "straight." So, this tale of an American ex-cop, presumed dead, trained by the last surviving Master of Sinanju (a Korean martial arts dynasty that claimed to have originated all the martial arts, that claimed to have consistently served the greatest rulers of the world back into pre-history) was written somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It was at the same time a fun and manly action series, and also social satire. (For example, Chuin, the current Master, refuses to dispense his services for free, unless someone accidentally commits the sin of interfering with his greatest passion, which is watching daytime soap operas, in which case the bodies start to pile up very quickly. Considered the deadliest man alive, to him "all mankind is merely targets in motion.") The series appears to have become the bestselling "man's series" of all time. Numbers are hard to get, but we are talking tens of millions sold. The phenomenon rivalled the success of the Mickey Spillane series in the 1950s, another "dirty little secret" in publishing. The record will show that, wisely, no Hollywood producer ever tried to make a film of the Executioner series. But hubris is hubris and Dick Clark ("the" Dick Clark) ventured where angels feared to tread. It would have been hard to do for a top-flight producer like for example Sam Raimi. For these clowns it was impossible. This is a truly horrible film that captures none of the fun of the books. Audiences (ie, male audiences who recognized what was being attempted) got the message real fast and told their friends. This film verily defines the word flop. And it did not help that Clark was so taken by his own brilliance that the film was released in theatres (no kidding) with the title REMO WILLIAMS THE ADVENTURE BEGINS. No, Dick, it didn't. It ended. And deservedly so.FOR FILM HISTORIANS: Interesting factoid, in spite of many attempts there has never been a successful film version of Mickey Spillaine's character EITHER!

Screen writer Christopher Wood (who wrote the Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker) and director Guy Hamilton (who helmed the Bond films Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun) join forces for this amusing and wholly improbable adventure flick. Based on the "Destroyer" series by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, there's a very real sense that this was to be the first in a series of films… but for one reason or another none of the proposed sequels were ever made. It could be assumed that the film isn't very good, hence the decision not to go ahead with any of the follow-ups - but that wouldn't be fair. Despite a degree of goofiness and some hammy performances, Remo Williams – The Adventure Begins is likable enough.Tough New York cop Samuel Makin (Fred Ward) is almost killed in an attack one evening. When he comes round in hospital he is bewildered to discover he has a new face, new fingerprints and new identity. He learns that he has been recruited into an ultra secret organisation dedicated to fighting crime. Makin is renamed "Remo Williams" and a Korean martial arts master named Chiun (Joel Grey) is entrusted with training him until he is skilled enough to be an agent. Chiun teaches Remo various strategies to improve his strength, speed and agility. Soon enough Remo is ready for action. He is sent by his boss Harold Smith (Wilford Brimley) to investigate a series of suspicious accidents involving army weaponry that have left a number of American soldiers dead. A shady company called Grove Industries, fronted by George Grove (Charles Cioffi), has been cutting corners in their production of military weaponry, making millions of dollars from inadequate products while placing everyday soldiers' lives in jeopardy. Grove will stop at nothing – including murder – to keep his affairs secret. But Remo has been assigned to bring Grove's organisation to its knees and, with his new martial arts skills and lightning agility, he means to do just that….Ward is a suitably abrasive, tough presence as the film's hero, while Grey has considerable fun hamming it up as his Korean trainer. Neither performance is a shining example of screen acting, but both men nonetheless bounce off each other with good-natured enthusiasm that upholds the spirit of the film. Particularly memorable highlights of the film include a dizzying action sequence on the Statue Of Liberty, which contains some hair-raising stunt work, and a fast-paced climax in the forests of the American Northwest. There are, it must be added, some ridiculously silly moments during the film. It's all good and well saying it is meant to be treated as light-hearted fun, but scenes of Remo running across sand and cement without leaving footprints, or dodging bullets fired at point blank range, topple into a realm of absurdity that is hard to accept. Also the very half-hearted attempts to create an element of romance between the hero and a hard-nosed lady army officer, played by Kate Mulgrew, are a woeful failure. Remo Williams – The Adventure Begins is no masterpiece, but if you're after a couple of hours of easy-going entertainment you could do a lot worse.