Nerd Alert Rewind: Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins (currently on Amazon Prime)
- Jimmy Palmquist
- 30 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Nerd Alert Rewind: Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins.
As a kid growing up in the '80s, I swear Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins was on HBO every other day. Back then, if a movie aired more than three times on cable, it automatically became a classic. I must have watched Remo leap across rooftops and dodge bullets dozens of times before I was old enough to understand what was actually happening.
Rewatching it at 50 is a weirdly wonderful experience. It's like finding an old action figure in the attic and realizing it's somehow cooler than you remembered. The movie is part spy thriller, part martial arts adventure, part comedy, and 100% pure '80s charm. Joel Grey steals every scene as Chiun, the hilariously demanding master who trains Remo while delivering enough sarcastic insults to power an entire season of reality television.
Does it make complete sense? Not at all! Is it a product of its time? Absolutely! But that's part of the fun. The action is practical, the villains are gloriously over-the-top, and the Statue of Liberty sequence still holds up surprisingly well. And the cast is amazeballs! The hugely underrated Fred Ward, the Broadway legend Joel Grey, the iconic Wilford Brimley, not to mention an early starring role for Kate Mulgrew.
Most importantly, Remo Williams reminds me of a time when discovering a movie meant stumbling across it on HBO at 2:00 in the afternoon and watching it because, well, there wasn't a thousand other options competing for your attention.
It's goofy, nostalgic, and endlessly entertaining. If you've never seen it, give it a shot. If you're an '80s kid like me, prepare for a flood of memories and the sudden urge to ask, "Whatever happened to the sequel they promised us?"
As a footnote, I despise Amazon's UI (User Interface) and controls. The quality of their streaming, video quality, and audio is also not the greatest. On the flip side, I do not have Amazon Prime for their video streaming. I have them for my shopping needs and this is a nice perk.
Check out the trailer below:
