I have found the holy grail of low budget eighties action, and it is called Miami Connection. A wonderfully cheesy Tae Kwon Do kicking, eighties rocking, ninja biking masterpiece. It's the great, forgotten eighties b-movie. It's been years since I've seen a movie that I loved this much on so many levels. I can honestly call this one of my new favorite movies.
It's not your typical bad movie. It's charm isn't out of it's stupidity or the staggering ineptitude of the people making it. In fact, I'd say that for what it is, it's well made. The action sequences are well shot and it's obvious that most of the actors at least know how to fight. For example, the film's writer/director/star, Y.K. Kim runs a martial arts school in Orlando and one of the co-stars, Maurice Smith is a kickboxing champion. The acting isn't horrible. It's not good by any means, but it's serviceable. This is surprising since the only two actors in the main cast with more than one credit to their name are Vincent Hirsch, who has one other acting credit and the aforementioned Maurice Smith, who had a handful of other credits for small parts in low budget martial arts movies. This complete lack of acting experience from the cast would convince you that the acting would be a lot worse than it is.
The most prolific people involved in this movie are Y.K. Kim's co-director, Woo-Sang Park, a Korean director of 20 films and composer, Jon McCallum, who's other credits include Surf Nazis Must Die and Soultaker, another pair of classic b-movies of the era, the latter of which was made famous on Mystery Science Theater. This movie should be a lot less competent than it is.
The charm doesn't come out of it's stupidity either. And the movie is stupid. It's about a martial arts rock band that fights crime, and the last ten minutes or so has them fighting biker ninjas.
The charm is because of the film's sincerity. There's nothing about this movie that convinces me that Y.K. Kim knew it was stupid. There's also nothing convincing me that Kim thought it was anything more than it was - a martial arts movie with some ham fisted themes about peace and friendship. But those themes aren't shoved down your throat. The moments that are supposed to be taken seriously can't be taken seriously, but you also can't make fun of them because there's an obvious heart to them. This movie is a sincere labor of love on Kim's part, and the rest of the cast seems to have been in on that. You don't get that sort of sincere feeling from a b-movie save for maybe the films of Ed Wood, but in Wood's case, he's the only person that wanted to make those movies. Here, everyone seems to want to be there, and is putting actual effort in and having fun.
The movie also has an awesomely cheesy eighties soundtrack featuring such awesomely bad songs as Against The Ninja and Friends Forever. Both are worth checking out. They're horrible, but they're charming. I included the audio only version of Friends Forever, because the audio quality on the video versions was very poor, and there's a dialogue break during it. Friends Forever was featured in the soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which is another reason I need to play that game.
If I'm not convincing you, watch the trailer. That's what got me to watch the movie. After watching it ten times in a row, I found it streaming on Netflix and made an evening out of it.
Seriously, do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It'll change your life for the better. It's not just one of my favorite b-movies. It might be one of my favorite movies ever. I haven't enjoyed a movie this much in years. Trust me on this - you need to see Miami Connection. Watch it on Netflix. If you like it enough, do what I intend to do and give the people who dug it up and distributed it money for an actual copy of the film, and some cool merch. They deserve it. Give them money to keep them funded so they can keep digging up more movies like this and distributing them to the populace.
There's a link to the distributor's page for this film below. Click on that and consider buying something after you watch it on Netflix. Companies like this need your money to stay afloat, and they deserve to stay afloat. They're people who love these kinds of movies as much as the people they sell them to. That's worth something to me. I'm considering just getting the standard DVD for the film and maybe the poster. The seven inch vinyl single is unfortunately sold out, but the VHS is still there if you want the authentic experience.
http://drafthousefilms.com/film/miami-connection
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| I beseech you, Draft House Films. Take it. You've earned it. |
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