Remo Williams...

Remo Williams: the Adventure Begins (1985)

The adventure began, unfortunately it didn’t continue, and although I am more than likely in the minority, I really wanted to see this movie jumpstart an entire franchise. Sure, it’s hokey, it’s clunky, and I’m sure it will grate the nerves of many a viewer, but every time I turn it on I’m instantly sucked into it, and I can watch it over, and over again.

The film was based on a series of popular adventure novels known as the Destroyer, the books were created by Warren Murphy, and Richard Sapir. The first in the series was published in 1971, it was entitled Created, the Destroyer, and it was followed by more than 140 additional novels.

The producers of the movie were certainly hoping to create a franchise, more than likely they were hoping to produce the American answer to James Bond, but the film was not a financial success, and no sequel was ever produced. By the way, amongst the producers was Dick Clark, and yes, I do mean that Dick Clark.

The film serves as an origin story and it works very well as one. Fred Ward is a cop who is thought to have been killed in the line of duty, but he wakes up in a hospital room with a new face, and a new name; Remo Williams. Remo is informed that he has been recruited for a secret organization, an organization that is answerable only to the President of the United States, and that he will be trained to be an assassin. As one of Remo’s new bosses (J.A. Preston) explains, he is going to become the Eleventh Commandment; thou shalt not get away with it.

Of course, before Williams can jump into action, he’s going to need some training, and that’s when Chiun comes in. Chiun is an elderly Korean martial arts expert, the master of the fighting style known as Sinanju, and he’s as stubborn a teacher as Remo is a student. The training sequences that follow take up a large chunk of the movie, but they are some of most entertaining moments too, and the humorous banter between Remo and Chiun are the best parts of the film.

Fred Ward delivers the appropriate mixture of annoyance, cockiness, and self-assured masculinity. Joel Grey steals the movie as Chiun, his comedic timing, and personality shine through. But, in this day and age, a Caucasian actor playing Asian in yellow-face is probably not exactly politically correct. The ever-reliable presence of Wilford Brimley is always welcome in my book and he’s as good as he always is as the leader of the clandestine operation that Williams is recruited by. J.A. Preston delivers a pleasurably memorable performance as Brimley’s assistant. And, Charles Cioffi is appropriately hammy as the villain of the piece.

Guy Hamilton’s direction perfectly blends the exciting action segments with the brilliant comedic sequences. It’s all blended very well and I can’t find much to complain about on that level. Although, I can’t help but think that Hamilton was brought in to add the James Bond element to the motion picture. With Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die, and the Man with the Golden Gun to his directorial credit, Hamilton was hardly a weak choice for a director that was being asked to helm the beginning of a new series that was intended to rival the Bond films. But, the differences between Remo and Bond are so stark that I’m not so sure that it was a good idea on the part of the producers to try to force a connection between the two characters.

I first saw Remo Williams in the cinema on the movie’s opening weekend. My interest was piqued purely from the advertising campaign and because I was thirteen years old at the time, I was completely unaware of the literary source for the picture. But, I was so impressed, that as soon as I left the theater, I walked right over to the nearby used book store, and began looking for some of the Destroyer novels. I’ve since become a huge fan of those books and if for no other reason than that, I should always love this movie, but I love the film for its own charms too.

One could easily dismiss my enjoyment of Remo Williams as the unsophisticated opinion of a then child. But, since I still find myself enjoying this movie more than twenty-five years later, I think that there is more to it than just that. I know the film received fairly lukewarm critical reception when it was released, but I liked it then, and I still like it today.