July 21, 2017
Tonight, friends and neighbors, we delve into the world of
“movies nobody saw when they were released, but found life on HBO.” Yes, I
know, it’s a VERY small sub-genre. But it just so happens that an actor from
yesterday’s movie made one of these. Fred Ward, who played astronaut Gus
Grissom, starred in a movie in 1985 called Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
Sadly, the adventure ended with this one movie.
Remo is based on “The Destroyer” series of pulp fiction
books. In the books, a NY policeman named Sam Makin is chosen to join a
super-secret organization of assassins known as CURE. It is CURE’s
responsibility to take out threats that even the CIA and FBI cannot touch.
Officer Makin responds to a call one night that is, basically, a set-up. He is
beaten to within an inch of his life, his death is faked, and he is taken to a
hospital where the CURE doctors give him a new face, and CURE gives him a new
identity. He is rechristened “Remo Williams” by his new supervisor, another
assassin named Conn MacCleary. His name, incidentally, comes from the maker of
the bedpan in the hospital.
Remo is given over to a little old Korean man named Chiun, played
by Oscar-winner Joel Grey, whose job it is to train Remo in the Korean martial
art of “Sinanju,” a technique that trains one to be a killing machine, able to
dodge bullets, walk on water, and use any and every part of his body as a
weapon. Remo’s training is rushed, though, because the head of CURE, a
wonderfully-grumpy old codger named Harold Smith (played by wonderfully-grumpy
old codger Wilford Brimley), has found a corrupt weapons procurement program
about to dump thousands of useless weapons into the Army weapons caches around
the world. The general and the arms manufacturer are to be taken out in what is
known in Sinanju as “perfect accidents.” And guess who has to cause these
accidents? You got it – our boy Remo.
I first saw this movie on a date in college. The date in
question did not enjoy the movie, proclaiming it to be a very poor man’s version
of James Bond. I could not disagree with her then, nor do I now, but, that
being said, I still really like this movie. Fred Ward and Joel Grey have a
great chemistry between them as unwilling teacher and even more unwilling
student. Gradually, they grow into a father-son relationship, complete with the
usual bickering over who gets to watch what on television. It seems Chiun has
found American soap operas to be the “perfect microcosm of American society,”
and refuses to miss even one episode.
Kate Mulgrew, long before she became a Starfleet commander
or a Russian/American resident of an American women’s prison, plays Major
Rayner Fleming, the Army officer who stumbles onto the dirty arms deal,
triggering CURE’s interest by tapping into a computer network she should not be
able to use. Charles Cioffi plays the millionaire weapons manufacturer, and
George Coe plays the general in on the con game being played.
Wilford Brimley is always fun to watch, mainly because it’s
like watching your grandfather act in a movie. I always enjoy seeing J.A.
Preston in a movie, too. Preston plays CURE operative Conn MacCready here, the
“recruiter’ who brings Remo into the CURE family. He always seems to have a
smirk on his face, even when he is speaking. There is something in his voice
that just makes us smart alecks say, “Yeah, he’s one of us. “
The training sequences are fun to watch, as Chiun leads Remo
through a homemade obstacle course of balancing techniques and strength
exercises involving Remo climbing out of a ride vehicle on Coney Island’s
famous Wonder Wheel and maintaining his composure and balance while riding the
car as it slides around the rolling track. At one point, Remo is attacked by
hired thugs at the Statue of Liberty, and is forced to climb down the famous
landmark as his attackers use the then-built scaffolding around the statue to
hit him from every way they can. In the end of the sequence, Remo uses his
Sinanju mastery of balance and weight distribution to run across a pit filled
with wet cement, and, of course, his attackers sink into the cement and drown.
Remo could have been the start of a series of films to rival
the now-known film franchises like Mission Impossible or the Tom Clancy movies.
What it suffers most from, though, is, well, a lack of glamour. Remo had a
small budget and it looked it. There are no fantastic stunts involving Tom
Cruise flipping motorcycles all over a bridge or hanging from a jet as it takes
off. In reality, Remo is more like the pulp fiction books that launched it.
It’s gritty, it’s tight, and it’s economical, if that makes sense. This is a
no-frills movie, where everything they have to throw at you is on the screen - no CGI, no elaborate mock-ups, no thrilling cities of intrigue to stage
wonderful car chases or nighttime escapes.
The biggest thing against Remo when it was released was the
simple fact that, outside of locker rooms and frat houses, “The Destroyer”
books were not well-known. Nobody could build word-of-mouth advance publicity
by testifying that the books were amazing, the plots were great, etc. I find
this to be kind of sad, because, leaving out the “fake death-rebuild the
man-train him as an assassin” plotline, Remo Williams could easily be Jack
Reacher, the hero of a fantastic series of books by Lee Child. Reacher is built in the
same vein as Remo Williams. Both were cops, one military, one street cop, but
both succeed in their jobs by doing what they do best – kicking ass when they need
to, but using their brain when they need to as well. I have often wondered if a
few “Destroyer” books are hidden on a shelf at Lee Child’s house.
Go find Remo Wiliams: The Adventure Begins and see what you think. It's fun, it's funny, and it has a healthy does of political conspiracy stuff in it... what more could you ask for these days?
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