Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)

[00:00:02] Let's get together, talk about the movies that we saw this week. We'll have discussions, talk film news, we'll laugh a lot and act like geeks. Sometimes we'll have a guest or two, sometimes it's just the two of us. Let's crack some jokes and tell some folks to come along and hang with us! Mike and... Chosen wisely.

[00:00:28] Hello and welcome to the podcast that is like 80% training and 20% other stuff. It's Mike and Mike go to the movies. I'm Mike Smith and joining me as always is a man whose face was reconstructed by a government agency so we can go on secret missions. Mike DiCruccio. How are you doing today, Mike? I'm doing great. Excited for today's episode. It's a fun time whenever we get to do a Kofi movie. Yeah! Woo! Yes!

[00:00:53] Yes, of course what Mike is referring to is that on our Kofi page, which of course is Kofi.com slash Mike and Mike Pods, we have a thing where if you donate $50, you can make us watch whatever you want. You can pick a topic for the episode. It's not exclusive to movies. Me and Mike D were actually kind of just going back through our Kofi donations and seeing what we've done over the last couple years. And we forgot like, oh yeah, our Let's Rank the Muppets episode, that was a Kofi donation. Yeah.

[00:01:17] Our Tangerine Dream retrospective was a Kofi donation. So yeah, not exclusive to just like picking one movie. But if you want us to just watch one movie, we can do that too. That's part of the thing. Yeah. That's part of the thing. You have a hand on the wheel here and Mike and Mike go to the movies. Yes, absolutely. And so several of our listeners like to take advantage of that. And today's actually is a first time donation. Right, Mike? This is somebody who is donating for the first time on this podcast.

[00:01:42] Yes. Yes. Shout out to Dave. First time donator, but not first time for the household. Cause shout out to Megan, his wife, who made us watch, I thought Convoy, but started the journey that led us to watching Convoy. Yes. But Megan herself did make us watch Marty, Marty Morphin Power Ranger. What's the hell? Is that the name of that movie? I forgot. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the movie. The movie. Come on. You certainly liked that movie more than I did, I think, right? Honestly, I don't remember.

[00:02:09] I feel like that episode was us mostly apologizing for how much we didn't like that movie. I'm kind of noticing a trend with the Kofi movies sometimes. You guys gotta pick better movies. You guys gotta do it. I think the lesson we need to learn is let the childhood favorites stay in the childhood. You know, we can move on. Let the past die, kill it if you have to. Kill it if you have to. Yeah, correct. Yeah, no, that said, Convoy, I thought rocked. I was a big Convoy fan. You did like Convoy a lot. Yeah, thank you guys for that.

[00:02:38] But yeah, Dave donated $50 to the podcast and he actually gave us two options to talk about. Yes. So he, but what did he say in his Kofi donation? What was the outline that he wrote out? Um, the donation was that he would like us to watch the movie we're discussing today. But if we couldn't find it, because it's not a super popular movie, uh, was to watch Paint Your Wagon, the Lee Marvin movie.

[00:03:03] Yes, which I think, uh, Dave, if you want to donate $50 more bucks and make us watch Paint Your Wagon somewhere down the line, I would, I would be delighted to do that. Mike seemed jazzed and disappointed that we could find the movie today. So we didn't have to watch it. You know, I, I've heard nothing but bad things about Paint Your Wagon. I've heard it's very bad, but it lives in my head rent free forever, uh, because of a Simpsons episode. Like most things. Like most things. Uh, but there's a Simpsons, uh, clip show. That's like a clip show of all the musical moments in the Simpsons.

[00:03:31] And the Paint Your Wagon is a musical starring Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin. Uh, and they, the Simpsons rent Paint Your Wagon thinking it's going to be some cool Western. Uh, and instead it's like a singing and dancing thing and Homer and Bart are aghast at it. And, uh, these songs in the Paint Your Wagon musical on the Simpsons are not the actual songs from the movie Paint Your Wagon, but I have the Simpsons versions totally memorized. Like they're, they are classics in the Smith household. So yeah, one day I, again, I've heard Paint Your Wagon is bad, uh, but if you donate 50 bucks, we'll watch it.

[00:04:01] And, uh, I'll definitely have more context, uh, just based on the Simpsons, uh, stuff to talk about. Yeah, it's always good to fill in the background of a Simpsons joke, but yeah, I don't, I don't, I remember talking with Dave about this one of the times we were hanging out about this movie and Paint Your Wagon. And I forget the exact context of like how and why they watch it or what the situation is. If there was like a, like a college hangout friend group would watch these bad movies or if they're like childhood favorites from Dave that we're just making fun of. But I don't, I don't remember.

[00:04:28] Uh, yeah, but in any case, we were able to find, uh, his first choice, uh, to talk about. And so that is the movie that, uh, we're going to talk about today. And that movie is from 1985. It's called Remo Williams. The adventure begins. America's top security experts have chosen this man. Don't take any chances.

[00:04:53] This guy's a killer for a special mission, but first he's got to pass one little test. Speaking English. Does your nightingale sing? Hold it. They move like a baboon with two crumb feet.

[00:05:23] Ow. However, I think I can do something with him. Goodbye, Mr. Crow. Who's he? No more Boy Scouts. Take a look at this. High altitude reconnaissance probe. Yes, we make that. There is none. Doesn't exist. These men will rob America of her might. He won't be with us for much longer. Unless someone, relax, can stop them. All right. That was in the trailer for Remo Williams. The adventure begins.

[00:05:53] And that is an accurate subtitle because the adventure doesn't even really start until towards the end of the movie. It's, uh, it's, it's really like, oh, this is the beginning of this character's journey. So Mike, are you familiar with the character of Remo Williams at all? Were you familiar with this, uh, a, this movie, um, but also kind of the backstory surrounding the making of this movie? No, I was not familiar at all about this. Um, uh, I do, like I said, I remember us talking about me and Dave talking about it one time we were hanging out, but, um, I had never heard of Remo Williams.

[00:06:20] I had never heard of the books, the character, the destroyer or whatever the series is called. Um, and all that. So no, I was not, not really familiar at all, but it's crazy that I saw on Wikipedia, there's like over 150 books in the series, which is psychotic still being written today. So when the movie came out, there was like 60 books. Uh, yeah, now there's like 150. Uh, they just like keep writing them. Um, but yeah, no, this, uh, movie is based on like a kind of pulp paperback series. Uh, it's called the destroyer and exactly what you just said.

[00:06:49] It's like these two characters, Remo Williams and, uh, Chun, uh, his like master who, uh, trains him, uh, and just the various adventures that, uh, they get into. I'm guessing relatively like just short action packed pulp style books. Right. Uh, and so, yeah, there's a million of them. Uh, there's a lot of these books. Uh, I had never heard of them until we got to this movie, but I feel like I had heard the title Remo Williams. The adventure begins before. I don't know from where I had heard it, but I feel like it just sounded familiar in my

[00:07:17] mind when I, when this came up. Yeah. I mean, I feel like maybe the same deal that I had heard of it as like one of those funny, like Babe Ruth calling the shot things, but then they, but then they miss like it's called the adventure begins and then there's not more movies. Uh, there is a followup. Uh, there's a TV pilots that they try to do like a spinoff of from this movie called Remo Williams, the prophecy, uh, but, uh, did not make it to series. It was just like a one-off thing. And I don't believe Fred Ward came back for the TV show. So, uh, weird also backstory surrounding this Dick Clark is a producer on both this and

[00:07:47] the TV pilot from New Year's Eve. Yeah. Of New Year's rocking Eve with Ryan Seacrest, Dick Clark. Uh, yeah. From New Year's Eve. He was an executive producer on the Remo Williams movie. He invented New Year's Eve and this movie. That's crazy. Exactly. Uh, and so weird thing. So yeah, I was looking into Remo Williams. The adventure begins. It was directed by Guy Hamilton who is best known for his work on the James Bond movies. He directed, I believe four James Bond movies, including Goldfinger, which, you know, it's a big one. And a couple of the Roger Moore's he's, he was like one of the Bond guys.

[00:08:16] It was like him and John Glenn who directed like five James Bond movies, not the astronaut, the film. They got the New Year's Eve guy and the moon guy. Exactly. And so he, uh, and somebody, he was like one of the James Bond guys. And so this is actually the second to last movie that he ever directed. Wow. Remo Williams, the adventure begins. And it bombed. I mean, it didn't do super well at the box office. It didn't, uh, you know, it was not a big hit. It was somewhat recognized. I mean, it got poor reviews.

[00:08:43] I will say that generally mixed reviews, but a little bit of recognition. Uh, it was nominated for an Oscar in 1985. Uh, do you want to guess what the Oscar was for Mike? Oh God. Don't say it's the one guy that's playing Chun. Uh, no, it's a, it's a tech, it's a tech, it's, it's for best makeup. Uh, oh my God. But that's worse somehow than being the actor. We will get into that. Uh, yeah, no, nominated for best makeup at the Oscars.

[00:09:10] And actually Joel Gray, who plays Chun, Joel Gray, who's known as like the MC from Cabaret. That's like his big thing. Uh-huh. He nominated for Golden Globe for best actor, uh, or best supporting actor in a comedy. 1985 is too late to be doing that stuff, I think. Yeah, but in any case, we'll talk about that in a minute. Uh, so yeah, Remo Williams stars Fred Ward as, uh, this guy, uh, who is like a NYPD cop, I think, right? Who is suddenly like in this kind of shootout and, uh, you know, his death is faked by this,

[00:09:39] uh, US organization and his face is reconstructed and he becomes Remo Williams to work for the secret organization Cure. And, uh, he has to train under this, uh, Korean martial arts master Chun. And that seems like a solid setup enough, like it's solid enough setup for a movie kind of into that idea. Uh, and then it is, the movie is like 90% the training. Like it's just him training with Chun for a long time before anything really happens. I was, I'm kind of on board with this movie. I kind of liked it. Okay.

[00:10:07] But you know, with some significant reservations, uh, one of those reservations being that, uh, Chun, the Korean martial arts master is put by Joel Gray in yellow face, the entire movie. Full prosthetic. Yeah. Full prosthetic. And it's, it's not like, um, I expected that character to go away after like 20 minutes. It's like, Oh, this is going to be the adventure of Remo Williams. After he gets through this training, he's going to go do some secret agent shit. Uh, and Sean is there the whole time. Uh, and he's a second lead basically. He's basically the second lead of the movie.

[00:10:37] And the movie is very much about the friendship between Remo and Chun that like kind of builds over the course of the movie. So yeah, I don't know that that's it's tricky. I got past it. You know, I kind of liked their relationship. As the movie went on, but it's one of those things like, uh, I, it's tough to recommend, uh, this movie as a result. For sure. For sure. I watched it with some friends who, when it ended, I was like, so did you notice that that guy's a white guy? Uh, and they were like, I, what was, I couldn't tell what was wrong with it.

[00:11:04] Like they just couldn't put together that it was like a guy in prosthetics. Uh, but they were like something uncanny valley was happening to me whenever I would see him. Yeah. Uh, and that makes sense. So yeah, there's a, there, it's crazy that that was nominated for an Oscar, but I guess it makes sense in, in some, like I was, that was like the one thing I knew about this, like after doing like a little bit of research before I started watching it. Okay. I was like, Oh boy. But I like thought it was going to be like Mickey Rooney and, uh, uh, sure.

[00:11:33] In breakfast at Tiffany's or whatever. Yeah. Like, but it's like they went, they went through a lot of effort to not make it terrible, like look aesthetically terrible other than, but like morally terrible, obviously. But like, so like, it's so insane. It's just the weirdest thing that's happened. Like, you know, two things can be true at once kind of thing. Um, so there's that. But then, yeah, I'm, I'm sort of with you where this movie is like, I'm kind of on board for a little bit. I mean, I'm actually on board for the most, the beginning of it.

[00:12:01] Like that whole, like he's a Pete cop who gets set up or whatever happens, you know, his death is faked. They reconstruct his face to look like Fred Ward. Yeah. Which is cool. Uh, and he's like joining this secret or it's like kind of like a D and D campaign. Like, you know, like you've been recruited into this shadowy organization to take down evil across the world or whatever. And, but first you must train. And I'm like, okay, I'm kind of on board with this. This is kind of interesting. Uh, Wilford Brimley is the like chief of the cure, the secret organization.

[00:12:29] And he's like, I don't explain what a computer is. That's fun. Yeah. So the guy who plays Mac is also great. The, uh, he's like the guy who like brings him into the organization. And then there's a meeting with, uh, Fred Ward, Wilford Brimley and J.A. Preston who plays Mac. And you know, it's just like the three of them and like, they're, you know, it's great. There's funny moments. It's cool. It's just like, oh shit. Yeah. Things are about to go down. Yeah. And what, what, if you have his, uh, Wikipedia or anything open, what else has that guy been in? He looked vaguely familiar to me. Uh, he used to be on Hill Street Blues back in the day. Oh, okay.

[00:12:59] So there's that. He's also in A Few Good Men. Uh, he's the, he's the judge. And if you, that might be what I'm thinking of actually. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So like I'm kind of having fun. I mean, like, you know, the, the chun of it all aside, uh, like the dynamic is fun, uh, you know, where he's this kind of stoic, you know, it's all the Michelle Yeo movies we watched where it's like, you know, the stoic master of the martial art must treat, treat this, you know, hotheaded upstart Tai Chi or whatever it is to what Tai Chi master's about. He's very much like the Pai Mei figure in, uh, this movie, right?

[00:13:25] like exactly yeah and kill bill exactly yeah so i'm on board with all that stuff but i think it's just this movie's two hours long uh and it just runs out of steam and it has a big action set piece like two-thirds of the way through where they were where they raid the bad guys like secret facility and they steal the evidence and they get out and the the mac dies and like all this stuff and then there's 30 more minutes and you're like no like i just like have lost all steam by then i think for me so so it starts off pretty good like you know as fun and cheesy as it is and

[00:13:54] we like these kind of movies you know we like it's not um maybe think of like buckaroo bonsai also a little bit like i also thought of buckaroo bonsai especially in the way and i think buckaroo bonsai even though it sort of teases more adventures it's very much like buckaroo bonsai is as if this is this guy's like 15th adventure right he's already famous yeah he's already yeah uh and so it's kind of like you're just kind of like one slice of it but it does kind of have that similar thing where it's like but maybe there could be a franchise out of this you know yeah yeah what other dimensions

[00:14:21] if we're across the eighth dimension with buckaroo bonsai what else is there to do right yeah yeah so like i was kind of on board for a while and then it just ran out of steam and i was just like oh my god and i kind of like lost track of what the conspiracy is that they're unraveling and like sure they're making faulty guns or some shit i think uh so yeah i don't know like it's okay and and the action isn't that great i don't think other than that one like kind of raid on the secret facility or whatever i saw a lot of people in the letterbox comments hyping up the uh statue of liberty

[00:14:51] sequence sure which i guess it's actually like whatever i think it was actually filmed the statue of liberty right and it's like that's cool and it's like when it was being reconstructed or like yeah renovated for the centennial or something or not the centennial but just for like a i guess the centennial of it being built right sure yeah yeah yeah so i mean like it it looks cool but it doesn't feel like a big crazy action set piece just is it just is a chase set on the scaffolding around the uh yeah so yeah yeah it's kind of like like okay i'm ready for this to be

[00:15:20] over and you know it's two hours is too long i guess that's what i'm getting at i thought the action was solid enough i mean there's a couple of decent stunts and stuff like that it's uh you know somebody who made a lot of james bond movies and i think yeah you know it's but it's also somebody who made a lot of the james bond movies of the 70s 80s which like had big stunts in there sometimes but sometimes they look kind of crappy right it's the it's the roger moore era of bond for the most part and so yeah i think uh there's some fun stuff in there there's a car chase scene that's fun there's a car that like flips over and explodes with chun inside and that's very intense yeah that

[00:15:48] was fun all that stuff but so yeah i think there's fun set pieces and stuff in there you know it's kind of just fine i will say so i ended up watching this movie on tubi it's available on tubi right now oh nice and so that's uh i think the ideal way to watch it is every 20 minutes i get a break i get to i get to chill and be on my phone for like a little bit and like recalibrate before jumping back into remotely yeah you find out what charles schwab is up to you before you uh

[00:16:15] or ford or whatever they're doing um yes exactly what's happening with cure yep so yeah i thought reemoliams was fun enough i think fred ward's a lot of fun like he's a great just action presence in this movie he's great i mostly know him from tremors so it's fun to see him in another movie yeah me too you know and then there's uh you know a larger cast that's kind of thrown out there uh there's uh this uh one of the generals scott watson's by george co uh who's name you might not know mike but he was technically one of the original cast members in snl back in the first

[00:16:42] season so he's never like credited uh really and he's not like considered part of uh not ready for primetime players that like original seven um but he was on the cast and whenever they needed like an old person in the sketch he was the guy that uh was in it cool that's fun uh so yeah he's here kate mulgrew from star trek janeway from star trek voyager she's like the love interest for remo uh who's like a girl boss uh major in the army uh kind of thing and uh she's pretty fun uh reginaldville

[00:17:09] johnson's in here uh he pops up so there's that john palito's in here yeah yeah it's fun like i mean i like i like the the like i said the conspiracy thing is sort of like this arms manufacturer grove or something right is is like making bunk weapons on purpose to like fulfill an army contract but collect the insurance but i don't know like they're doing some weird whatever thing but there is something about the you know the corporations control everything about it because like he's

[00:17:37] telling the general like you better lose that report i made you kind of thing like the the report that exposes their faulty weapons and stuff i was like oh that's interesting that's an interesting take on this for 1985 you know yeah absolutely i'm looking at some of the wikipedia stuff here mike and uh just for some of the filming so i want to uh correct what i was saying before the statue of liberty scenes there is some footage of the real life statue of liberty but all the stuff they shot was like a replica uh okay of the statue which does make more sense um but

[00:18:04] otherwise uh the stuff like coney island was actually shot at coney island uh you know the the stuff with like the wonder wheel ferris wheel stuff that that's the real ferris wheel uh so there is that um but there is uh a line here on the wikipedia page uh where one of the producers was kind of talking about uh casting joel gray as chun okay uh who apparently went through four and a half hours of makeup every day uh to for this for this movie wow like that's insane the producer said we assumed of course that we would be using an oriental actor we couldn't find one and then we

[00:18:32] thought of gray we sat for 10 minutes and we're like what about this guy that's what that means that's crazy is so insane in uh 1985 especially only because uh the hong kong boom is happening like the hong kong action movie boom is happening right then the character does not need to be korean he could be chinese and that's yeah and and even then i would guess in the 80s they wouldn't have cared about that difference they probably would have just said he's korean whatever but yeah and like this is the same year that yes madam comes out right like there's just like there's so many

[00:19:02] incredible martial arts movies happening in hong kong granted a lot of them did not make their way over to the states uh you know it took some time for a lot of these movies to kind of build an audience and stuff like that but like there's incredible asian actors doing incredible martial arts on screen in the crappiest movies like you know there's so many great movies but like so many movies that are like these are three these are three great set pieces strung together by nothing you know yeah and and in 1985 hong kong is a british colony still like just call up somebody you're the you're the james

[00:19:31] bond guy like yeah that's crazy that is true just get sweetheart imagine this with sweetheart as the guy or something like that's so cool but i yeah i saw something i don't remember where it was but about how the um like added on top of just like obviously being racist to not cast a asian person that like the the martial art is fake like obviously on besides it being like you know like the pressure points and

[00:19:57] the like your magic shit you know all that stuff yeah but like whatever the word they use i forget what like name they call the the specific technique of martial art is fake so like yeah it didn't have to be a korean person and then like the plot of that there's so much dialogue around like the superiority of the korean people over the chinese people because he keeps calling him chinese and he's like no i'm korean all this stuff like yeah you could have just not had him be korean like you could have just found an asian person to play like find a chinese person to make the guy the character chinese

[00:20:25] like it doesn't have to be like a whole thing about well we couldn't find a korean person so we went with a white guy it's just insane and that yeah like and you're going through four and a half hours of of makeup a day to to go like everyone had to know like everyone's like a little bit uncomfortable on that yeah no it's uh it's a weird choice uh for sure but uh yeah again once you get past that the relationship between remo and shun is kind of fun it is kind of fun like they like they

[00:20:53] have a good chemistry together uh you know all that stuff and it does feel like uh you know obviously they hired guy hamilton to direct this movie also the screenwriter also worked on a couple of bond movies uh he wrote the spy who loved me and moonraker wow so they really thought they had like a bond on their hand they're like they wanted to make an american bond basically that was like the idea this was going to be like the american james bond they wanted fred ward to be in like three or four movies you know all that stuff and uh did not take off in that way yeah well they had

[00:21:18] 8 000 novels to pull from so why not be like we're creating a lifelong franchise here it's gonna happen yeah honestly like you know there's so many yeah again now i mean at that point there's only 60 like there's only 60 novels to draw from uh as well as like several comics and like all that stuff now now there's 150 because they've never stopped publishing them it's not the same writer anymore it's like you know several different authors have kind of like cycled through and all that stuff but i guess there must be like enough of an audience for uh the destroyer series for remo williams books

[00:21:48] to uh keep to keep putting them out you know there's there's multiple a year that's crazy i mean yeah there must be an audience for them i mean it's kind of like reacher jack reacher you know i was just thinking that yeah there's 30 plus books of those but i mean i don't i had never heard of it till the tom cruise movie but that's because you know we're i think a little younger than when those books started and stuff but um well what's the other one too james patterson and i think alex cross is his detective character okay like every couple years there's a like an attempt like i think morgan

[00:22:16] freeman is in one or two in the 90s and then okay yeah tyler perry one yeah don't cross alex cross yeah so like i think that's incredible so yeah it's like fascinating that like yeah there there's an audience for some of these you know major detective literary characters like that um yeah but we've never heard of him i mean conan is a pulp novel character also yeah absolutely apparently in 2014 sony hired shane black to uh begin work on a destroyer script they wanted they wanted him to do

[00:22:43] it apparently he's a fan of the books and uh in 2018 he said the project was still in play but hasn't really been anything uh since then so maybe that's what brings him back maybe he comes back with uh rima williams i think that should be the next um mark walberg no or who was it parker what was that movie that he was in that was a shane black movie yeah that was a shane black movie uh play dirty was the name of it and i'm the guy who watched it i'm i'm the one maybe that became maybe

[00:23:08] his destroyer script became uh became what play dirty was maybe uh that's totally possible uh and i thought play dirty was all right i kind of had fun with it it's a decent enough time i mean it's uh it's not nearly shane black's best uh and it's you know it definitely feels like this is your amazon prime movie but i hope it leads back to shane black making a real movie at some point uh because nice guys so that means yeah nice guys is good i'd be interested how karen kusama's destroyer fits

[00:23:36] into the the chronology of the destroyer franchise uh yeah that's the uh the female reboot uh destroyer exactly nicole kiddin as rima williams uh yeah what else about rima williams the adventure begins mike anything else about this movie that we should be talking about well i wasn't really prepared for and i wonder what your reaction to the sort of like fantasy elements of it of like the martial art being like you can dodge bullets and you can run on water and you can very matrix uh

[00:24:02] style stuff yeah speaking of of hong kong wire action movies like hello get imagine yin wu ping oh my god that'd be so good coordinated by that'd be so cool i just watched uh eastern condors recently oh nice which have you seen that i have not but i know that's a criterion movie right yes yeah i i was gifted that criteria in blu-ray uh on my birthday and so yeah it's a movie directed by sammo hung but young wu ping is like the older guy in the movie uh it's and it's got it's sammo hung

[00:24:31] it's gordon lu it's young wu ping it's uh corey yun is in there as well a lot of those hong guys yeah it's it's it was funny watching it because it had been a little while since i watched like an 80s and 90s hong kong movie because we watched so many of them for the michelle yoh season yeah and watching it he's like oh hey all my old friends are here everybody who's in all of these movies is here that's awesome i gotta watch that that sounds great yeah it's good yeah uh so but what did you how did you because because the movie's like relatively grounded up until then like

[00:24:58] besides the like you know secretive shadow government thinking people's deaths and stuff and then it's like and now you must learn the ancient mystical ways you're like what the fuck wait that is true uh yeah no i think the way that kind of comes in so that like you like remo discovers this has happened to him and he's stuck in this life now if the government has essentially kidnapped him yeah forced him to become an assassin forced him to become an assassin and so he goes out on his first

[00:25:26] job and he's infiltrating this like shack and shun is there right and he's just kind of like you know sitting in the corner doing some stuff uh and he kind of like pays him no mind and tries to go upstairs and he's like uh do you know if your boss is home he thinks he's like trying to assassinate uh this guy named chun but he doesn't know this is chun right uh and it's actually a test from the organization to uh you know have him fight chun uh to see if chun can uh train him let's like see how he

[00:25:53] does and so there's a whole fight scene between him and chun uh in this beginning that's how they meet and immediately you're like oh he has like the ancient ways he has he can move like water yeah and you know dodge bullets and all that stuff it's kind of ridiculous um and then yeah then it's just like you know kind of have a it's it's i guess dr strain you know whatever insert whatever reference you want where they break him down of his of his uh his uh prejudices or whatever his preconceived notions of what what is possible uh and then he can run across wet cement and do all that stuff

[00:26:25] yeah and uh we spend most of the movie doing that uh and just building up their relationship and so you see them at coney island and they're doing training exercises on the ferris wheel yeah uh all that stuff um you know and they kind of blossom and there's a moment when like they're in the kitchen and like chun shoot like shoots like two bullets at him and he's able to dodge them all that but then he almost he misses the third one he almost hits him you know all that stuff's going on there's bits where like they're talking about how he can use the ancient ways to pleasure a

[00:26:52] woman and like get laid and stuff like that there's you know bits here and there there's a lot of uh funny stuff of with chun like yeah like like leading him on like telling him to uh that scene where he's like telling him that like seven techniques to please a woman and all this stuff and he's like first you do this and this and let's and then and then number three you shut up and make dinner like you know like it's like you know he's just like slapping him down which is pretty

[00:27:17] funny uh that where he shoots him yep shoots at him twice uh and then remo doesn't dodge the third time and you hear the gun click and he's like ah you used the other four bullets yesterday and then he shoots one more time and now there's a bullet in the chamber he's like yes but i reloaded uh oh that is pretty fun like yeah i do love their kind of like you know you young whippersnapper energy they have it's pretty it's pretty fun yeah they have fun banter back and forth and uh you know

[00:27:42] remo and uh kate mulgrew's character fun little relationship towards the end of the movie i mean you kind of like they don't really meet until like there's like 30 minutes left of the movie by the time they finally meet i think right yeah well he they meet technically outside the like secret office building and she's trying to hail a cab and she it's that whole thing but it's like a really brief moment it's just kind of like where they see each other for the first time but they don't like actually like engage with each other till they're on the the island at the training facility or

[00:28:10] whatever the hell is going on at the end yeah but every once in a while it cuts back to like seeing what she's up to yeah uh and you know she's a woman in the army and uh all that stuff and then you're dealing with sexism in the army and stuff like that there's a moment where it's like oh it doesn't bother me that you're a woman and he's like well it doesn't bother me that you're a man like that yeah it's pretty good yeah yeah she's kind of a like uh you know like straight laced is is on the the heels of this conspiracy like she's not supposed to know about it but she's witnesses something and is like starting to put together whatever is happening and so she you know knows too

[00:28:40] much kind of thing is where is how it all ends up and remo and chun save her basically at the end right or work together with her yeah they work together and she's in the car when like the car kind of goes off the cliff or whatever and so like they all get out of there uh and remo and kate mulgrew are like get out of the car but then chun's the one who's stuck in the car yeah and it makes you think chun died for a second but he didn't die he's fine that's pretty funny i forget what he says when they go like and it's this big massive like you see a fireball like just emerge from the car

[00:29:10] yeah and it's like a really slow motion like like laden flatbed military truck off a cliff rolls 8 000 times explodes in a big fireball and they're like chun no and remo goes down there and he opens the door and i forget what chun has some one-liner about like what took you so long kind of like type thing uh he's pretty pretty unscratched like he's totally unphased yeah it's good it's good good stuff that's that's pretty fun um so yeah i think some of the set pieces are fun i think the

[00:29:36] relationship between remo and uh chun is pretty fun i wish it didn't go for the yellow face uh routes uh you know even if it was just like joel gray as an american martial arts master that'd be fine that'd be so much yeah yeah there is one more thing i want to mention um yeah which is funny i don't know i'd all have to talk to megan and dave if they can confirm this but there's like a thing we say in the friend group that is terminate with extreme prejudice which remo williams says in this

[00:30:04] movie and i like fell out of my chair and i was like is that where this is from no no it's not because that's from apocalypse now that's uh oh you're right there's you're right okay you're right yeah yeah yeah but like knowing them i was like did they get that from this they got it from this instead of apocalypse now instead of apocalypse now yeah i don't know i wouldn't be surprised let me know megan and dave sound off let me let me know if it's for if it's from this or apocalypse now yeah fair enough yeah but definitely the phrase i'm pretty sure the phrase is from apocalypse now like

[00:30:34] it's gotta be from there but all right remo williams the adventure begins i kind of i had an okay time with it i thought it was fine that was all right yeah i had i had more fun talking about it with you than i did while i was watching the movie let's put it fair enough fair enough but in any case we do have a couple more kofi donations uh on the horizon mike yes uh david not to be confused with dave who made today's donation david who has donated many times in the past uh he and most recently just uh made us watch undercover blues yes uh back with another donation this month uh with uh

[00:31:03] dracula dead and loving it yeah that's right i forgot that's happening it's gonna be soon so very curious about that one because that is of course a mel brooks movie we're both huge mel brooks fans of course but it is a mel brooks movie that i'm sure i saw i definitely saw it at some point when i was a kid even then i was like this is not as good as the other mel brooks movies so curious how i'll react to it i don't think it's in my uh i have like a mel brooks dvd box set and i don't believe that's in there i have a mel brooks blu-ray box set and it might be like the same

[00:31:32] set so i might not have it either i'll have to check but yeah but have you seen dracula dead and loving it mike no i have not but because that box set is is it's only like six movies it's not like the complete like it's not the whole thing okay yeah yeah i i have a box set that definitely does not include the producers but it has pretty much everything else oh interesting i'm not sure if it's got dracula it might have just like skipped that one yeah it might have been robin hood men in tights right yeah and a lot of those things are like you know different studios or whatever yeah so who knows

[00:31:59] how those things work but um yeah no i've never seen it so i'm excited to excited to find out about dracula dead and loving it nice so we'll be talking about that one for kobe donation in a couple weeks and then probably in november uh jake also frequent donator donor uh donor to the show he is making us watch armageddon uh the michael bay movie uh to sort of tie into our deep impact episode from a few uh few weeks back yeah he was he was so incensed and and jake just to let you know i refuse to learn the

[00:32:24] difference between a comet and an asteroid sorry because we kept calling deep impact an asteroid i think and that's a comp or whatever we we switched him around uh and he'll look into it i'll figure it out yeah jake sound off in the comments let us know yes absolutely but yeah we're gonna be talking about armageddon uh which would be a fun companion piece of that episode and we're gonna have producer colin back on that one as well as as requested by jake uh in his donation yeah you have a lot of power when you donate to the ko-fi page you know that's what we're saying yeah

[00:32:53] absolutely all right so that i think brings us to the end of this episode mike unless you have anything more to say about reema williams the adventure begins well no i'm not not specifically about the movie but i do want to shout out fred ward again because i mostly only knew him from tremors also and then just like he's in stuff which is crazy so it's it's like um but what did i just watch him in recently southern comfort the walter hill movie he's one of the guys in the in the unit and he's really good in that but he's the just straight up lead of this movie which i think is kind of

[00:33:19] interesting it's like one of those one of those attempts it seems like for him to to be just the main guy pretty cool yeah i mean a couple years before this he was in the right stuff as well he was gus grissom yeah right stuff right yeah i saw somebody call him like john bernthal before john bernthal and it's like that's kind of that's a pretty good energy yeah yeah similar niche to those two guys kind of have yeah yeah you're saying fred ward could have played the punisher in the 80s uh if that was i mean there was a punisher in the 80s it was dolph lundgren it was dolph lundgren yeah but i think fred ward would have been a better one i think he's a good he'd be a good casting

[00:33:49] choice he'd be sick yeah there's still time uh actually no he died a few years ago for sure fred ward is dead yeah fred ward died a few years ago r.i.p he can't play the punisher anymore but but he's great in reema williams he's a lot of fun in this yeah yeah so i think that's it for us okay cool well thank you again to dave for uh making a donation and uh making us watch a movie uh and uh if you want to drop 50 more bucks at some point to make us watch paint your wagon

[00:34:13] we will that feels like a threat i always feel a little bad whenever we're not like glowing like yeah man this movie rules when it's a kofi donation yeah uh but we have to be honest right it's the risk we take yeah exactly and i feel like the last few kofi donations have been uh a little we've been a little bit mixed on so hopefully next one coming the next one's coming will be better yeah yeah they can't all be style like 17 you know i guess if they can't all be like widely considered one of the

[00:34:41] greatest movies they can't all be freddie got fingered you know it's uh you're not you know daddy would you like a sausage you know uh there you go and we talked about star trek first contact was a great one yeah we saw like plenty of great movies yeah we've talked we've talked about plenty of great ones and again i think this one is solid i had a good time with reema williams despite the racism put that on the poster yeah uh all right mike d where can we find you online this week

[00:35:09] you can find me at md film blog on letterboxd and blue sky you can donate to support the show on our kofi page kofi.com slash mike and mike pods where you too can pick a movie to hear us have mixed reactions to it fifty dollars and we'll talk about whatever movie you want and if you want merch we have merch available on our red bubble mike and mike pods dot red bubble dot com that's right you find me online at m smith film blog on twitter and blue sky mike smith film on letterboxd radio mike sandwich and instagram thank you so much listening to The Complete Works Podcast i'm Mike Smith's

[00:35:37] Mike DiCruccio don't forget to rate and view the show on apple podcast or any other podcast app and if you want to contact us go to blue sky at complete works pod or go to instagram also at complete works pod you can find the rest of our podcast and rapture press alongside many other podcasts all kinds of comic books and movie news and all that good stuff our theme song was created by kyle cullen you can reach for your own podcast themes at kyle's podcast themes gmail.com and our logo was designed by mac v or at fearless guard on blue sky check out the main podcast the complete works

[00:36:02] where season five is going on i believe this week is the week in which we have seen better days hell yeah shout out uh yeah i know this is my test kyle edits these episodes the mike and mike episodes so he he will have to know to play the better days clip and if he doesn't then i know he's not editing properly whoa shots fired i can take him down yeah exactly mike fails to realize the amount of power i

[00:36:29] hold over his podcast and for his transgressions he will spend the last few seconds as a fucking chipmunk i'm sure he'll do a good job that is the end of this episode like my god in the movies we'll see you on the other side i can't wait to see what bullshit kyle puts in there now that you called him out