Miami Connection (Woo-sang Park and Y.K. Kim, 1987)

 A rock band/taekwondo group of friends/orphans (Dragon Sound, played by YK Kim, Vincent Hirsch, Joseph Diamond, Maurice Smith, Angelo Janotti and Kathy Collier) stumble into conflict with the Miami Ninja, a group of Ninja who are also importing drugs into Orlando.

Cue mayhem and sweet tunes.

I wish I had watched this movie with no prior knowledge. Miami Connection has been one of the most popular cult movies of the last decade. 

What can I add?

The movie takes place in Orlando; one actor looks like a giant Michael Phelps; the actor playing Jimmy’s (Maurice Smith) dad is the youngest actor in the cast.

While there are unintentionally funny moments, the movie is impressive on its own terms.

This is a low budget genre movie that succeeds in its key aims.

The filmmakers wanted to make a martial arts action movie with music and they succeeded. 

The action is well-shot and staged.

The performers are martial artists and they are not called onto to do that much - with a couple of exceptions.

Enough words have been written about Maurice Smith’s performance of the monologue about his missing father. 

As far as the rest of the players go, my personal favorite was the former band leader who seeks vengeance on our heroes for ‘stealing’ his job. He is so volcanic in every scene it completely nullifies the ridiculousness of his dialogue.

William Ergle (Jeff) initially feels like a miscast. For most of the movie, he is the primary heavy. For most of his scenes, he is stuck delivering threats he cannot embody. During the biker scene, he seems to melt into the background.

But as with all the filmmakers' creative decisions, there is always a twist. In Ergle’s case this is his final fight sequence where he explodes into action and takes out three guys in rapid succession. It is a genuine surprise.

While I had heard it before, Dragon Sound’s music is still catchy - I had that ‘Friends’ song caught in my brain for three days.

The biggest compliment I can give the movie is that it feels like a one of a kind. While the ingredients are a melange of eighties pop culture, the movie does not fit any template. 

In its occasional amateurishness and weirdness, this movie feels like a home-made creation. And there is a naivete to the film that removes any sense of schadenfreude. 

It is a shame Y.K. Kim and his writing/directing collaborator Woo-sang Park  were not able to create a series of these films. It would have been interesting to see where their vision went next.