moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) (10/29/85)
A lot of people have been discussing this movie, and so I'm only going to
dwell on a point-of-view which not many other people have, i.e. I've read a
lot of the Destroyer Series and I like the characters of Chiun and Remo.
And while I enjoyed the movie, and I thought both Joel Grey and Fred Ward
did a fine job (though I still see Chiun as played by Pat Morita --
especially when he laughs ("He He He")), I felt the tone of the books --
humor, graphic violence, really rotten Bad Guys, and two asassins who
dispatch menances with a calm which is hilarious -- was replaced with some
of the humor and a James Bond storyline. What annoyed me is that one would
think, from the movie, that Sinanju was an ancient art of doing stunts on
high places. It's not -- it's a technique for killing people. But we
constantly get shots of Fred Ward saving his life through -- luck! Not
training, not help from Chiun; just plain baldfaced luck. I was cringing
during the scene of Remo riding the log down the wire as the villain fires a
rifle at him. Does he uses his talents to keep the log between him and the
gunner? No! He just hangs on their while a man with 50 zillion guns misses
him like crazy. Shades of the A-Team. Also, Wilfred Brimley plays a nice
Wilfred Brimley, but he is NOT Smitty. No way. I've yet to find the actor
who could play Smith correctly.
I hope they make a sequel (not as much as I hope for a sequel to
Buckaroo Banzai, though). But next time, how about a really nasty
villain (it's only hinted at, during the computer sequence, how
nasty the contractor has gotten), and a bit more Remo/Chiun?
"The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him."
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
ARPA: fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPA
UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, allegra, sb6, lbl-csam}!fluke!moriarty
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