Product Description

When a street-smart NYPD cop (Fred Ward) regains consciousness after a bizarre mugging, he has a new face and a new identity! Now heÂ's Remo Williams, the #1 recruit of a top-secret organization, and heÂ's toppling evil at every turn – even atop the Statue of Liberty – in this Â"spectacular and funny adventure filmÂ" (Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune)! Trained by a quirky Korean martial arts master (Joel Grey) to dodge bullets, brave terrifying heights and thwart attackers with his bare hands, Remo becomes the ultimate criminal exterminator. But when he faces off against a corrupt millionaire and his army of henchmen, the real adventure begins!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8358 in DVD
• Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
• Released on: 2003-07-15
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com
Talk about hubris: this film, released at the height of sequelmania in the mid-1980s, came with its own intimations of future sequels built right into the title. Unfortunately, you have to make a good first film in order to generate follow-ups--something these filmmakers didn't manage--so the adventure began and ended with this one. Based on the pulp paperback adventure series The Destroyer, the film deals with a ne'er-do-well, Remo Williams (Fred Ward), who is recruited to battle the forces of evil. He is trained by an Asian martial arts master who, in those days before political correctness, was played by Joel Grey in heavy makeup. But the action is both forced and preposterous, jokey without every really being funny. The best thing about the film is Grey--and his stereotyped depiction of an Asian is pretty hard to take today. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

4 Stars for the movie, 1 star for the DVD!
I can't tell you how disappointed I was when Remo Williams FINALLY was released to DVD and MGM had the temerity to release it in FULL-FRAME (pan and scan) rather than widescreen in its original theatrical aspect ratio! It's 2003, MGM...people are savvier about film than they used to be, and we want to see our favorite films the way they were originally presented in the theater! I don't even demand "extras" like commentary or making-of documentaries...just a crisp transfer in anamorphic widescreen with enhanced sound. Is that so much to ask?

Four stars for the movie "Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins" - a wonderfully engaging '80s action-adventure flick that doesn't take itself too seriously, featuring terrific performances by Fred Ward and Joel Grey - and one star for the crummy presentation it received on DVD. Remo deserves so much better than this.

Depends on if you're a fan of the book or not.
This film gets a lot of bad commentary by people who did not read the book series that it was based on. The.......... review has this problem as well. This movie was based on a series that currently has 123+ books in it. If you are a fan of the books, the character acting by Joel Grey and Fred Ward is pretty right on, not a political correctness faux pas as the review suggests. It was not stereotypical acting, but a near perfect depiction of a character whose personality has developed over the course of a 100+ books. Yes, the action scenes are a little lukewarm primarily because it was not really possible to depict the capabilities of the book characters with the technology of the time. If you are a Destroyer fan, you will most likely love this movie and the life it brings to Chuin and Remo, and even Harold Smith (although Wilford Brimley is a little too portly to be the gaunt, perfectly groomed Smith, although he accomplishes the lemonyness perfectly).

I loved it
I saw this in the theater when it came out and anxiously awaited the sequels. This is one movie where the sequel would have probably been a much better movie if for no other reason than actors and director would get into The Destroyer legend.

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.