From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a WATCH, REACT, and REVIEW for you.
Let’s watch Samurai Cop released in 1991.
Starring:
Robert Z'Dar, Mathew Karedas, Janis Farley
Directed by:
Amir Shervan
Genre:
Action, Crime, Thriller
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
Unrated
Budget:
N/A
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
4.6
The Synopsis from IMDb:
Joe Marshall and Frank Washington are two tenacious police detectives who seek at all costs to stop the Katana, a renegade Yakuza gang composed of violent and sadistic killers who want to lead the drug trade in Los Angeles.
15 minutes in
Opening music has a very electric organ video game vibe. It’s actually kind of cool.
All of the Japanese men “talk like this” (gruff voice).
So far the big baddy in the film is a villain by the name of Fugiyama, who is a Japanese gang leader with a fabulous feathered 1980’s mullet.
They wipe out a rival gang that refuses to join forces. The action isn’t terrible but it’s totally unsound with strange angles and editing choices. It's just a little confusing about what is going on.
Shaky cam before it was popular, but it is totally unintentional. All of the scenes seem to be pieced together with awkward dubbing to match.
Minimal score and I am not sure what's happening most of the time because many of the edited scenes don’t match each other. It gets a little better when we begin following two men, possibly cops witnessing a crime.
Immediately you can tell that something funky is happening with one of the cop’s hair. Every other scene his hair becomes a big fluffy mess. And the funny thing is that the scenes with our cop in the wig edited in doesn't help the narrative. They extend the runtime.
And voila, we finish out the first 15 minutes of the film with a gratuitous love scene.
40 minutes in
Robert Z'Dar is an actor famous for playing in many low budget movies in the late 1980’s to the 2000’s and in this film he plays one of the American assassins that is within the Japanese mob called the Katana gang and he really doesn’t go by a name. So this is the first time I’ll be referring to the actor when I talk about a character. He’s so good in this because he knows he's playing a character type, in fact all of the actors play their roles much the same. It’s theatrical camp. I can’t help but smirk while the actors are speaking because, is this supposed to be a comedy or not? This is definitely a comedy because these actors are being directed to be over the top and a little silly.
So the guy with the long hair, Joe who is supposed to be the hero just blows off the girl he was romantic with, so that whole scene was not really necessary to the story. He also has a really crude conversation with a nurse, but to be fair it was not his fault, however, I have a feeling this whole exchange means nothing to the story. The dialogue in this movie is very odd. And it's very hard to like this guy who seems to be our protagonist.
The chocolate chips in the cookie has to be the police captain! OMG! He is awesome. This movie puts a big smile on my face. No one is taking this seriously at all and I love it because it lightens the mood. I also love the fact that the captain’s office is in a landlord’s office where you can see the keys to apartments hanging on the wall.
Joe has an amazing rousing speech at a restaurant pretty much threatening the bad guys and then proceeds to hit on Fukiyama’s girlfriend, Heather in front of a crowd of people as if they are the only two people in the room. Again so awkward.
It all leads up to this really hilarious action scene and a terrible early 90’s appropriate race joke.
We finish out the segment with a rather normal scene with normal dialogue as Joe talks to Heather as if we are suddenly in a romantic comedy. She explains how Fugiyama is not her boyfriend, but it still looks like it to me. She accepts money and gifts from him and he has her followed. She’s hanging out with him for lunch. That sounds like your boyfriend.
1 hour in
It turns out that the first girl that Joe was romantic with is offering everyone to spend the night with her. Is there anything wrong with that. I don’t think so, but that is definitely not something you see everyday. When you think about it, the question comes to mind, is this the way the filmmaker thinks of women? It’s actually a very disturbing thought. There is evidence of other archetypes of women in the story, but in general there is a unique dynamic between the men and women in the film that doesn’t quite sit right with me.
There are a lot of action scenes that are played for the pure schlock of it and they are quite fun as you can pretty much see how everything was done. Theres no veil of illusion here and that’s the charm of these low budget productions. There is a mix of semi professional and home made props and special effects that don’t look realistic at all. I am really enjoying myself with this one.
To the end…
Well we have the last of 4 gloriously creepy love scenes. It’s not that it’s graphic or anything but the camera just lingers in a voyeuristic way. What really makes it hard to watch is that it looks like the women in these scenes are super uncomfortable. It’s very cringey.
Thank goodness, the good old police captain comes through for us with an over the top performance ordering his police officers to straight up kill the bad guys! Yes ladies and gentlemen, it’s murder, death kill time.
We finally learn that Robert Z'Dar’s character goes by the name Yamashita. He faces off against our protagonist, Joe in a battle. The action was sped up for most of the shots to make the actors look faster. Once they got into the samurai bit, where they were using swords, the actors filmed in slow motion to keep from cutting each other and the film was sped up to look like it might have been in real time. It’s an old trick.
As well, the sound effects were reminiscent of many of the kung-fu movies of the 1970’s and 1980’s, full of many repeated foley sounds.
Speaking of influences, this film is mainly influenced by 1980’s buddy cop action movies like Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon. Each character in the film is a caricature of the ones in both of those movies playing into tropes. As well at the time there were rudimentary video games with repetitive, and this film feels a lot that.
It’s a fantasy film, with gorgeous women, a hulky star, with a dangerous foe. The director Amir Shervan cooked up the film from nuts to bolts without a working budget. He had no money but he had a dream.
He couldn’t afford money for lights so he opted to use daylight and home lights. All of the scenes are simple, taken in homes and back alley’s, public places, parking lots, public parks and ranges, rental boats and scenic helicopter footage spliced together. Much of it though didn’t feel as if there was a road map to make all of the scenes flow into each other. Gotta commend the effort though! I love that ingenuity.
Reshoots and extra dubbing was needed to try to pad out the run time and connect these all into story elements somehow.
Amir asked his actors to wear their own clothes and drive their own cars. He couldn’t afford sound so it was filmed without it and then dubbed in months later. Many of the extra voices were Amir’s. It was his labor of love.
Mathew Karedas who played Joe, was asked to return for pickup shots but he had cut his hair for other jobs. A wig was chosen to try to restore his look. A hair dresser could have cut the wig into a believable shape, however, there are no illusions here. This is a fantasy and the wig is our confirmation. It’s one of the glorious hallmarks of this movie.
This movie proves that if you have a dream, pursue it and to some degree achieve it. If all of the technical aspects of this film had been met, would this film be the best film ever made. The answer is no. But I’ll tell you what, I just spent an hour and change with a big smile on my face. Amir had a dream and he got it done. And there it is with all of it’s splendor, Samurai Cop. A very guilty pleasure.
My Rating:
6
That’s my review. I hope you liked it. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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