Cheap Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins (DVD) (Fred Ward, Joel Grey) (Guy Hamilton) Price

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Customer Reviews of Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins

I loved the books at least up until Richard Sapir passed away. The books were fun, funny and contained much social satire. They were gems of wit and wisdom.

Basically it is about a cop recruited to be a supersecret agent for the government for an agency called CURE. The theory being that the President needed a tool to combat evil that could be fought only by violating the Constitution. Of course Presidents now boast about violating the constitution but these stories are from a more innocent age.

In the movie Fred Ward is perfectly cast as Remo Williams named in a very amusing way - "We put a lot of thought into it."
Joel Gray does a marvelous job of Chiun the Master of Sinanju the latest in a line of assasins dating back a millenia or two. Sinanju being the "sun source of all martial arts".

Wilford Brimly is probably the biggest departure from the books cast as Harold Smith. In the series Smith was a much more interesting character and the interplay between him and Remo is always entertaining.

Overall the plot was weak. Iw ould have rather had them adapt one of the many stories from the book series. I just never felt that Grove was that evil a guy worthy of accelerating Remo's mission. Patrick Kilpatrick was a great villan - muscle man "Stone". I particularly enjoyed the scene where Remo uses Stone's special feature to escape from a gas chamber.

The film was well structured I thought with equal amounts of Remo's training and mission, Joel Gray doing a wonderful Chiun, soap operas and all.

I thought it was a good first effort. Had they kept it up I am sure they would have gotten the hang of it and the movies gotten better and better.

I downrated the DVD mainly because of the format. so-called "fullscreen" is really only a half a screen. I did not buy the DVD just for that reason. I have an old copy on Betamax that I still watch twice a year or so.

There are no significant bonus features on the disk as was pointed out by a previous reviewer. This is just about inexcusable these days.

If my Beta tape ever weasr out I may be forced to buy a disk, but until then maybe MGM will get their heads out of you know where and re-release this movie properly.

His name was Remo and...
First-this movie is far from getting it right.But just the fact that it was even attempted is enough for any Destroyer fan.I've always been a great fan of the paperback series-any series with a charachter like Chiun (pronounced CHYEEWN not CHYUN)can't go wrong.They at many times beat the world news on events that were going to happen.I really liked the movie in spite of itself.Grey did as fine a job as probably humanly possible for a cauc-ie actor portraying a nearly un-portrayable oriental charachter.The villains were alot like you encounter in the books ie: men in power who don't know what real power is and therefore must find out the hard way.Whoever cast Brumley (no offence to Wilford) is an idiot.Oh,and Kate was great-she stepped right outta the series-fine lady,beautiful woman & a wonderful actress.Alas, no sex or even full nudal frontity or even jellified villains eating their own firing guns with no hands,but hey,it's a Dick Clark production,and that's the reason why...and Guy,you Hamilton!!why could'nt you bring as much style and excitement to this as you did for Goldfingah.Which reminds me the theme song and soundtrack is sub-par to say the least.Who could write and sing a cool song out of a title like Remo Williams:The Adventure Begins,anyway.It should have been called His name was Remo and the script should have followed #1Created,The Destroyer up until the execution scene.Gotta admit the rest of this movie is really cool especially the carney played by William Hickey.

Remo is a fun film to escape to
This film does not take itself seriously and you shouldn't either. Remo Williams is a lot of fun and it aspires to be nothing more than that which is great. Because of rising production costs, among other things, have forced studios to stay clear of movies that are made just for fun and focus on huge CGI effects blockbusters or long boring oscar winning dramas. All the easy going films that were so common in the 80's have gone away and it's a shame. Part of what makes Remo so great is that there is a complete lack of huge explotions, car wrecks, wire stunt action scenes, or CGI monsters. Remo spends more of its time dealing with the work of becoming a hero which, in this writer's opinion, is much more interesting.

I have never read the Destroyer series but you really don't have to to enjoy Remo. If you're looking for a giant action laced movie you may want to keep looking but if you are in the mood to see a fun, more grounded, how to become a hero, sort of film, Remo is perfect.