Remo Williams (Fred Ward) is a NYC police officer. After chasing down a bunch of hoodlums and fighting them off, a bus pushes him into the water leaving him for dead. And all the other officers think he is dead as well. But really, he has been recruited into a highly secretive branch of the government. They have altered his face (which really just consists of shaving his mustache) and start training him to be a super spy. Chuin (Joel Grey) is his sensai (?) hailing from Korea and teaching him the ancient Sinanju, which allows them to very slowly dodge bullets, run on wet cement/water, and basically do parkour on the Statue of Liberty. Chuin is skeptical that Remo will be able to learn Sinanju because he is white and eats too much fast food. But through their time together Remo starts to pick it up faster than Chuin would have imagined.
Remo is sent to investigate a corrupt weapons manufacturer for the army. When they discover that Remo is on to them, they try to have him killed. Remo has to try and kill the head CEO and make it look like an accident before they get to him first. But is his training complete enough for the mission?
The film has it's moment of ridiculousness. One of the main ones is having a white man play the very very Korean Chuin. I don't understand why they were still doing this in the 80's. It's bad enough having Mickey Rooney play on in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Did we learn nothing from that movie?? The other silliness basically came with the made up fight style they had which mostly seemed to just be parkour and dancing around bullets. It is pretty funny to see Fred Ward doing that. At times the fight scenes were very staged and I just wish he would go back to fighting giant earth worms that are trying to kill him. I don't know if I could sit through this movie again. Maybe if it was 30-45 minutes shorter. But I did enjoy the relationship between Chuin and Remo.
Rating: *
Roddy Macdowell played Chiun in the TV series (just 4 pilot episodes--kinda worth checking out IMO for amusement factor) so they didn't just do it ONCE.
ReplyDeleteThis still makes me feel a little creeped out and it's 25 years old...and yet Rob Schneider played a Chinese wedding officiator fairly extensively in I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry. I guess they were embarrassed enough that he remained uncredited even though he had a lot of screen time.
Here's a "good" clip. It's been up since 2011 so maybe they won't take it down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc3GBDJ2sK0