| | | | Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins...
(1985) |
fficer Samuel Edward "Sam" Makin (Fred Ward) is a tough, decorated, and honest NYPD cop. Just like any other man he enjoys the occasional Knicks game and is a lover of burgers.
However, his idyllic existence is about to go kaput.
After trying to save a man from a mugging (who turns out to be one of the gang himself and attacks him), Sam's car is pushed into the Hudson River by an unkown man driving a garbage truck.
However, Sam survives under the most bizarre circumstances: his death has been faked by a secret government organization known as C.U.R.E. (they practice the 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not get away with it."). Their existence is known by only five people: Harold W. Smith (Wilford Brimley), the head of C.U.R.E.; Conn MacCleary (J.A. Preston), a veteran agent and the man who drove the garbage truck that knocked Sam's car into the river; The President (and several of his predecessors), another person who will be mentioned later; and now Sam. With all his decorations and dedication to justice, Sam was the ideal candidate to become an assassin for C.U.R.E.
Rechristened "Remo Williams" after the name and location of the manufacturer of the bedpan in Sam's private hospital room, he's given his first hit. However, the only person at the hit's location there is an old Korean man named Chiun (Joel Grey), and he's the man Remo is supposed to kill. However, Chiun turns out to be a very agile fellow despite his age and dodges every shot from Remo's pistol. When he manages to dodge every attack that Remo makes as well as cause pain with just a few hand motions, Remo gives up. Conn reveals that Chiun is the fifth person who knows about C.U.R.E. hired by the "emperor Smith," as Chiun calls him, to train Remo in the (fictional) Korean martial art of Sinanju, which is what Chiun used on Remo earlier.
Despite Remo's non-Korean heritage (Chiun is a nationalist) and his agility ("You move like a baboon... with two club feet!"), Chiun sees a glimmer of promise in the man, and agrees to train him in the art of dodging bullets, walking on air, using your hands and feet as deadly weapons (I mean more deadly weapons than any other martial art), and to be able to incapacitate a man with only a few hand motions.
It turns out that Remo is going to need all the training he can get. The government has recieved faulty machine guns from a man named George Grove (Charles Cioffi), head of Grove Industries. However, the greedy Grove knows that they will be too expensive to repair, so he uses a man he knows in the military, Gen. Scott Watson (George Coe), to bury the report written by Maj. Rayner Fleming (Kate Mulgrew), who witnessed the defect of the weapons firsthand. However, it also turns out that Grove has been taken to court for many crimes, always getting off because of unsubstantial evidence or the disappearance of the one man with knowledge of his dirty dealings (and the witnesses to that man's murder). When Fleming starts doing a little investigating, Grove decides to make her disappear. Also, C.U.R.E. is in trouble when they try to find info on Remo when he's photographed with Fleming. Remo and Chiun must stop the arms dealer before he harms more people with his faulty weapons and drains moremoney from the Government for projects that won't ever see the light of day.
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"Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins..." was released in October of 1985 with lukewarm response, but found an audience on video, and it is rightly deserved. This is one of the best 80s action/comedies out there. You'll enjoy it a lot more if you don't take it seriously at all, since the film has it's toungue planted firmly in it's cheek.
Fred Ward makes for a gruff, funny, and a major ass-kicking hero in Remo. Joel Grey (under heavy makeup) does a great Chiun, with many funny lines and a great chemistry with Ward, making their evolution from a teacher/pupil relationship to an almost father/son relationship quite believable. Wilford Brimley makes for a gruff, no-nonsense Smith, while preston does a good job as the veteran agent Mac.
There are some great action set pieces (the most famous being Remo vs. a few hired thugs on the scaffolding of the renovation-in-progress Statue of Liberty) and a nice music score from Craig Safan (most famous for composing the score to "The Last Starfighter"). However, there are a few flaws that keep the film from a perfect 10.
The villians are quite cookie-cutter for a character such as Remo Williams. A man like Remo deserves many of the super-villians found in the book series, but they go with a generic baddie. Also, his motives are a bit unclear (at least to me, I had to guess a little on his motives for the summary above).
While the movie takes some liberties with the "The Destroyer" series of novels that it is based on, it is still pretty good, despite the few flaws listed above.
More than 20 years later, we're still waiting for the adventure to continue...
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Based upon characters from an extensive series of spy/fantasy novels called "The Destroyer". 
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Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, writers of the "The Destroyer" novels on which the film is based, wrote the film's novelization. -Thanks to Kyle Palkowski
A TV pilot was also made and aired, but never went to series. Jeffrey Meek was cast as Remo Williams and Roddy McDowall (doing a frighteningly good impersonation of Grey's performance) as Chiun. Craig Safan remained as the series' composer.
The film has two James Bond film mainstays: director Guy Hamilton (director of "Goldfinger," "Diamonds Are Forever," "Live and Let Die," and "The Man with the Golden Gun") and screenwriter Christopher Wood (screenwriter or co-screenwriter of "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker," and also creator of Jaws, played by Richard Kiel).
For some odd reason, while the US trailers and the actual movie credits say that the film is called "Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins...," the US posters shortened it to "Remo: The Adventure Begins...".
In the UK, it was released as "Remo - Unarmed And Dangerous".
Executive producer Dick Clark (yes, THAT Dick Clark) still holds the screen rights to Remo Williams and is still trying to get another movie off the ground.
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Joel Grey was offered the role of Chiun several times before accepting it, but kept turning it down because he didn't think he was the right kind of actor for the part. Moreover, Grey had no previous martial-arts experience (and received no such training for the movie once he was cast). What changed Grey's mind was a meeting with Carl Fullerton, the film's make-up artist. Grey said that if he could successfully be made to look like an 80-year-old Korean, he would take the job. Fullerton gave the task his best shot and afterward, a private screen test was held between himself and Grey. With Chiun now cast, Fullerton went on to receive an Oscar nomination for his work.
Although the Statue of Liberty was undergoing renovation in preparation for its centennial when the film was made, the filmmakers shot on and around the actual statue and its scaffolding as well as on a full-sized replica (from just below Liberty's book to the top of her torch) which was constructed in Mexico City. Because of weather and scheduling, the sequence required additional photography during the summer following the original mid-December (New York) and late-February (Mexico) shoots. Two different locations photographed during three separate time periods illustrates the value of storyboards and thorough pre-visualization.
Some of the actors who auditioned for the part of Remo Williams claimed to be proficient in the martial art of Sinanju, not realizing it was a fiction derived from the Destroyer novels on which the movie was based.
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|  |  |  | | Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins...
Locations |
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Filming locations: Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City, NY and Mexico (for the weapons testing range scene).
Can you help? Do you know any of the filming locations used for Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins...? [Please send them in]
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There are two releases of the score on CD only: an out of print promo disc, and a recent wide release version by Perseverance Records, which is 10 minutes longer than the promo release and has better sound quality, and is thus the version to get. Use our search device...
Track Listing (Promo Release):
1. Main Title
2. New Identity
3. Ambulance Steal
4. Meet Chiun
5. Rooftops
6. Climbing Test
7. Chiun Fights
8. Remo Floats
9. The Statue
10. Liberty Chase
11. Wet Cement
12. Chiun and Remo
13. Smart Dogs
14. Military Base
15. Back to Base
16. Exploring Assignment
17. Log Chase
18. Grove Gets It
19. Remo's Big Ending
Track Listing (Perseverance Records Release):
1. Main Title
2. Remo's Fanfare
3. Knife
4. Rear Ended
5. Remo Steals The Ambulance
6. Meet Chiun
7. Rooftop Running
8. Obstacle Course
9. Ferris Wheel Theme
10. Wonder Wheel
11. Chiun's Ferris Wheel Theme
12. Remo Floats
13. The Plot Thickens
14. Elevator Encounter
15. The Statue
16. Liberty Chase
17. Remo's Revenge
18. Wet Cement
19. Chiun And Remo
20. Smart Dogs (Parts 1 & 2)
21. Military
22. Rats
23. Escape
24. Mac Self Inflicts
25. Mount Promise
26. Exploring Assignment
27. Log Chase
28. Grove Gets It
29. Chiun Walks On Water / Remo's Big Ending
30. Organ Music (Source Cue)
Tommy Shaw's song for the film, "What If," has been released on his album with the same name.
Tommy Shaw's video for the song he wrote for the film, "What If (Remo's Theme)," had he and his band playing on the scaffolding of the Statue of Liberty with clips from the film intercut.
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| | "A hero who doesn't exist must save America from an enemy we never knew we had."
| |  | | The always excellent Fred Ward stars... |
 | | Joel Grey co-stars as wise master Chiun |
 | | Can't beat these locations |
 | | With sidekick Rayner Fleming (Kate Mulgrew) |
Year:
| 1985 | Studio:
| Orion Pictures | Director:
| Guy Hamilton | Starring:
| Fred Ward,
Joel Grey, Wilford Brimley, J.A. Preston, George Coe,
Charles Cioffi, Kate Mulgrew, Patrick Kilpatrick | | - | - | Genre:
| Action | | | | + | The performances, the action, the music, the humor, and a lot of the writing. | - | The villians are a bit generic considering the hero character, and their motives are a bit unclear. |
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