Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (aka Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous) was a 1985 American action-adventure-thriller film directed by Guy Hamilton. The film featured Fred Ward as Remo Williams, Joel Grey as Chiun, Wilford Brimley as Harold Smith and Kate Mulgrew as Major Rayner Fleming
The character Remo Williams is based on The Destroyer pulp paperback series. The movie was the only adaptation featuring the character Remo Williams, and fared poorly in theatres. It received mixed reviews from critics, although it did earn Joel Grey a Golden Globe nomination. The film was supposed to be the first of a series based on The Destroyer series of novels by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir.
In the movie Sam Makin (Ward) is a tough New York City who works at the Brooklyn precinct. Like most movie cops of that era he was in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. Makin is recruited as an assassin for a secret United States organization, CURE. The recruitment is through a bizarre method: his death is faked so that there will be no questions asked as to his disappearance. Rechristened “Remo Williams” (after the name and location of the manufacturer of the bedpan in Makin’s hospital room), his face is surgically altered and he is trained to be a human killing machine by his aged, derisive and impassive Korean martial arts master Chiun (Grey).
Though Remo’s training is extremely rushed by Chiun’s standards, Remo learns such skills as dodging bullets and running on water. Chiun teaches Remo the Korean martial art named “Sinanju”. Remo’s instruction is interrupted when he is sent by CURE to investigate a corrupt weapons procurement program within the US Army.
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