Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins

A New York cop gets kidnapped, given a new name, and handed to a Korean martial arts master who teaches him to dodge bullets and walk on water. The government needs killers who don’t use guns. This is not a film that takes itself seriously, and neither should you.

Fred Ward plays the cop turned assassin. Orion Pictures wanted an American James Bond. Ward can’t match Roger Moore’s debonair wit, but nobody’s asked him to. He’s a former cop who hits hard and thinks slow. His physicality evokes Burt Lancaster. Watching him scale the Statue of Liberty and a Coney Island ferris wheel, you believe every frame. A better-paid actor would have insisted on a stunt double.

The real interest is Joel Grey as Chiun, the ancient Korean master dispatched to teach Remo the way of Sinanju. Grey’s casting was controversial in 1985. It remains controversial now. Those who find the casting inexcusable should skip the film. Those who stay will find a performance that defies easy categorization. Chiun is superhuman and addicted to soap operas. Spiritually elevated and openly bigoted. Grey plays him with a strange, fluid precision — his movements slightly too smooth, as though a very sophisticated machine is imitating a man. He gets the script’s sharpest lines and delivers them with deadpan accuracy.

The film’s DNA comes from the Roger Moore Bonds—low stakes, high camp. Director Guy Hamilton made four of them. Screenwriter Christopher Wood wrote two. They know the formula cold. The set pieces are memorable. The villain, sadly, is not. An evil defense contractor who’s bribed some generals. Bond movies are often only as strong as their heavies. Dr. No introduced the franchise with a villain you remember sixty years later.

The title is the film’s original sin. Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins tells audiences they don’t know this character, confirms they’re right not to, and promises them the real story comes later. Raiders of the Lost Ark wasn’t called “Indiana Jones.” Dr. No wasn’t called “James Bond.” Even the successful Bond knockoffs—The Ipcress File, The Silencers—understood that you name the mission, not the man.

A cold open wouldn’t have hurt either. The credits roll over New York City footage. The film then largely abandons New York. A pre-credits sequence—even something as simple as Remo’s faked death—would have signaled confidence. Bond films always told you what kind of ride you were in for before the title card appeared.

That said, none of this is fatal. Remo Williams is a good adventure film, a comic book movie from before comic books took over cinema, set in a world without capes or mythology baggage. Ward’s lower salary freed up money for location photography and stunt work, both of which earn their keep. The film entertains. It’s better than the lesser Bonds, which is precisely what it seems to be aiming for.