Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins... | |
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![]() "Look Out! He's Unarmed and Dangerous!" | |
Directed By | Guy Hamilton |
Written By | Christopher Wood |
Cast | Fred Ward, Kate Mulgrew, Wilford Brimley, Joel Grey |
Produced By | Judy Goldstein, Larry Spiegel |
Executive Producer | Dick Clark |
Cinematography By | Andrew Laszlo |
Film Editing By | Mark Melnick |
Music By | Craig Safan |
Studio | Dick Clark Productions |
Distributed By | Orion Pictures, Arrow Films, MGM |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Release Date | October 11, 1985 |
Runtime | 121 Minutes |
Rating | PG-13 |
Budget | $40,000,000 |
Gross | $12,421,181 |
Overview[]
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins... is a 1985 American produced action/thriller film starring Fred Ward, Kate Mulgrew, Wilford Brimley, and Joel Grey. It was directed by Guy Hamilton and was a live film adaptation of the best selling and longest running pulp fiction novel series, "The Destroyer" by the late Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy first published in 1971.
Remo Williams was intended to be the first of a film franchise but poor reception resulted in the cancellation of the sequels. A remake/reboot film tentatively titled The Destroyer has been in development for several years.
A tough street cop is apparently killed in the line of duty. Awakening, he discovers that his face has been surgically altered and he has been forcibly recruited by a super-secret government agency known as CURE as their assassin and is renamed as Remo Williams.
Trained in a unique ancient martial art known as "Sinanju" by a sarcastic, misogynistic ancient master known as Chiun; Remo will become the perfect unarmed weapon.
Plot[]
Cast[]
- Fred Ward as Remo Williams
- Joel Grey as Chiun
- Wilford Brimley as Harold Smith
- J.A. Preston as Conn MacCleary
- George Coe as General Scott Watson
- Charles Cioffi as George Grove
- Kate Mulgrew as Major Rayner Fleming
- Michael Pataki as Jim Wilson
- Reginald VelJohnson as Ambulance Driver
- Jon Polito as Zack
- Gene LeBell as Red
- Sebastian Ligarde as Pvt. Johnson
- Tom McBride as Jim
- Suzanne Snyder as Nurse
- William Hickey as Coney Island Barker
- Patrick Kilpatrick as Stone
Production[]
Based on the wildly popular and successful pulp novel "The Destroyer" series created by the late Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir which was first published in 1971. The long-running series attracted the attention of both Spiegel-Bergman Films, Inc. and Dick Clark Cinema Productions, Inc. into acquiring the film rights from Pinnacle Books; the publishing company of the series in late April of 1980.
At the time, Pinnacle had published nearly forty pulp novels based on the series and had attracted a regular audience of over 30 million readers. Lorenzo Semple, Jr. was announced as script writer but the project stalled for several months afterwards. The film underwent several working titles over the course of the next few years of development ranging from: Remo: The First Adventure; Remo Williams and the Secret of Sinanju; Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous; Unarmed and Dangerous; The Destroyer; Remo; and Remo: The Adventure Begins.
By November of 1981; Dick Clark Productions proclaimed that they had "revived" the project and were pushing it forward independently. They were subsequently able to procure support from Orion Pictures by convincing them of the potential lucrative success of a film adaptation of the "The Destroyer" series. Orion was optimistic that it could be an "American blue collar James Bond" and green lit production even going so far as to contract the primary actor of the film, Fred Ward for three films in the hopes of establishing a future franchise series. Eager to replicate the success of the James Bond Franchise with their own version; Orion recruited several alumnus of the franchise including Guy Hamilton (who had previously directed Goldfinger; Diamonds Are Forever; Live and Let Die; and The Man with the Golden Gun) as director and Christopher Wood (who had previously written Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me) as screenwriter.
Fred Ward was picked primarily by Director Guy Hamilton as his first choice for the role of Remo Williams from over two hundred other candidates. Despite being in great physical shape, Ward underwent taxing physical conditioning to fulfill many of the physically demanding stunts of the role; insisting on performing many of them himself to lend realism to his performance in the film. Ward was adamant that "It's not a macho thing. Every character you play has his own body language, as unique and personal as fingerprints. If you're capable of being in on the action, you have a professional obligation to do so."
His co-star, Joel Grey however was a far more controversial casting choice. Despite an extensive search for an Oriental actor to portray Chuin, film makers were unable to locate a suitable individual with the necessary acting and acrobatic abilities for the role and reluctantly decided on Grey despite being a Caucasian. His casting caused severe discord and backlash from many Asian Americans who had previously celebrated and supported the development of the film, particularly with having a Korean in such a prominent character role.
Hamilton himself was said to be dubious, but was convinced however thanks to a heavy and extensive make-up regimen that allowed Grey to appear Asian. This however required Grey to endure an elaborate four-and-a-half hours to transform him into aged Korean appearance. In fact, to preserve his skin from the irritation that the make-up caused as a side effect; Grey had to always take a day off between a day of shooting takes.
Principal photography began in November of 1984 and wrapped in February of 1985. Shooting locations included the Statue of Liberty and Coney Island in New York as well as the Popocatépetl Volcano and the Iztapalapa Borough of Mexico City in Mexico. In particular, the filmmakers were forced to build a massive 85 foot fiberglass replica of the head and upper torso of the Statue of Liberty in the Iztapalapa location for certain action sequences which they intercut with previously shot footage from the actual New York monument. This substitution was necessitated because the actual monument required extensive refitting of the superstructure that was being undertaken at the time of filming and required $500,000 just in construction costs.
Alternative Movie Titles[]
- Remo Williams
- The Destroyer
- Remo: The First Adventure
- Remo: The Adventure Begins
- Remo Williams: Unarmed and Dangerous
- Unarmed and Dangerous
- Remo Williams and the Secret of Sinanju
- Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins...
Additional/Alternate Movie Taglines[]
- It's going to take a dead man to save the country...from a death merchant's dream of destruction!
- A hero who doesn't exist must save America from an enemy we never knew we had.
- There is an Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not get away with it." This Commandment has a name: REMO WILLIAMS.
- Look Out! He's Unarmed and Dangerous!
- The Destroyer Movie!
- A most reluctant hero takes you on an action-adventure armed only with his fists and wits...and with his tongue planted in his cheek.
Reception[]
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins was released on October 11, 1985 alongside Silver Bullet. It premiered in 1,170 theaters nationwide and grossed $3,376,971 on its weekend run; rising to the rank of the 4th most popular film but failed to surpass the other weekend premiere Silver Bullet which came in as 3rd rank as well as the two front-runners; Commando and Jagged Edge which had premiered the previous weekend.
It was able to maintain its hold on the 4th most popular movie for the following weekend run, still failing to dislodge Commando and Jagged Edge but found new competition from the long running Back to the Future film which had already having played for over 16 weeks. Back to the Future made a successful from behind comeback and seized 3rd place over both Remo Williams and Silver Bullet.
The momentum of Remo Williams flagged and dropped to the 5th place by its third weekend and proceeded to rapidly drop in the rankings over the successive weeks, falling to 9th rank by its fourth weekend and then fell entirely out of the Top 10 by it's fifth weekend. In total, the film had a 12-week box office run and earned a total of $14,393,902 which failed to earn back its staggering $40,000,000 production costs. Thus it was considered a box office bomb. Its poor performance dashed any hopes for a sequel or a franchise series despite its optimistic title as Remo Williams' future adventures were abruptly cut short.
Some critics admitted that it was "a welcome and breezy alternative to the mayhem and genocide of Rambo and Commando," but it mostly garnered negative reviews. The Metacritic website scored it "46 out of 100" with mixed to average reviews.
Screenwriter Christopher Wood criticized the choice of Fred Ward as the central actor for the film, proclaiming that while he did think that Ward was a fine actor; he was not leading man material. Wood admitted that the climatic conclusion for the film had be axed due to budgetary reasons probably did not help things either though.
The film did receive an Academy Award nomination in the category of Carl Fullerton's Makeup in his transformation of Caucasian Joel Grey into the Asian Chuin and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for Joel Grey. However it lost out in both awards to Mask and Klaus Maria Brandauer respectively.
Trivia[]
- Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins... was also released as Remo Williams and the Secret of Sinanju and more simply as Remo: The Adventure Begins... and Remo: The First Adventure in certain parts of the United States and on some US movie posters. It was also released as Remo Williams: Unarmed and Dangerous in the United Kingdom.