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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: REMO WILLIAMS
Message-ID: <1315@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 16:18:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1315
Posted: Thu Oct 24 16:18:59 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Oct-85 04:06:20 EDT
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             REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
               A film review by Mark R. Leeper

	  Capsule review:  A reasonable variation on the James
     Bond formula directed by a James Bond director.  Joel Grey
     has some fun as the Korean martial arts expert Chiun and is
     the best part of the film.  Without him, this would be a
     bland spy film.

     One of the many jokes of Woody Allen's SLEEPER is that we Americans of
today have everything backwards.  Tobacco and hot fudge are the healthiest
things for your body and health foods are poison.  The core of REMO WILLIAMS
is a Korean martial arts expert named Chiun, and what makes Chiun
interesting is that Woody Allen's joke is part of his character.  Everything
that Americans think is good is really bad; everything we think is bad is
really good.  You like hamburgers?  They're poison; all fast food is poison.
You think an automatic is a good weapon?  It is useless.  And what is the
paragon of American culture?  The soap opera, and the more melodrama, the
better.

     But I am getting ahead of myself.  The main character of REMO WILLIAMS
(played by Fred Ward, who also played Gus Grissom in THE RIGHT STUFF) is,
not too surprisingly, Remo Williams.  That's not his real name.  He was a
policeman killed in the line of duty, or so the world thinks.  Instead he
was given plastic surgery to make a new man of him--literally.  To finish
the job of making a new man of him, he is given a mentor--the superhuman
Chiun.  Based on my memories of two novels od "The Destroyer" series--the
series on which the film was based--Chiun has a greater presence in the film
than he does in the books.  In the books he is the spicing that gives the
dish character, but he is used sparingly.  Of course, part of the difference
is that the film concentrates on Williams's training, so there is more of
his teacher in the film.  Chiun is played by Joel Grey, perhaps best known
as the owner/entertainer in CABARET.  The make-up used to transform Grey
into Chiun is somehow not entirely convincing.  Some of what Chiun can do in
the book--like dodge bullets--sounded good in the book but was not (and
probably could not be) realistically translated to the screen.  Instead,
they just show him ducking out of the way, but not fast enough.  Also in the
cast is Wilford Brimley as the head of the top secret government
organization.  Brimley is a very good actor, but only playing characters who
are basically Wilford Brimley under other names.  Kate Mulgrew's character
is a big disappointment.  She starts out gutsy and intelligent, but by the
film's end she proves to be a more traditional bubblehead.  Charles Cioffi
plays the villain, an unscrupulous defense contractor.

     REMO WILLIAMS was directed by Guy Hamilton, who also directed spy
adventures like GOLDFINGER, A FUNERAL IN BERLIN, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, LIVE
AND LET DIE, and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.  The screenplay was by another
James Bond veteran, Christopher Wood.  This new film is certainly better
than the worst of the Bond series, but one suspects from the title that the

producers want to start a new series, and it seems unlikely that the public
will really want more than two or three films with this set of characters.
Rate the film +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.


					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper