Based on that description, Miami Connection sounds like one of the greatest 80's action films ever made, but it fails on every level to even be competent. In fact, that movie description, taken from Netflix, is a lie because this movie does not have a story. The start of the movie shows a gang of ninjas intercepting a drug deal in Southern Florida. Afterwards, we are brought to a club where out heroes, Dragon Sound, are playing their hilarious theme song.
What is so special about Dragon Sound? They play in gis, do martial arts (Taekwando), and can play music without the use of their instruments! I understand not everyone can play a guitar (me included) but most people can make a semi-believable attempt at fake playing one. The Korean guy, Y.K. Kim (actor, writer, and producer) is playing his guitar worse than Hulk Hogan ever did. At one point, Kim is strumming the guitar twice as fast as the song. It was at this point in the movie, I knew I was in for a real treat.
The two men who are talking during the performance are our two main villains. The Asian man is the leader of the ninjas and the white guy is the leader of a biker gang whose connection to anything in this movie is questionable at best. It is here I would like to go on a tangent. The bad guys in this film all suffer from what I like to refer to as "nWo cool" taken from the famous WCW wrestling stable whose wrestling tough guys dressed like complete idiots.
Oh man look at how cool those guys are. Hogan is playing his belt like a guitar! My favorite nWo cool moment was when the nWo was exiting a limousine and each member had their shirts tucked into their jeans and had leather fanny packs. Back to Miami Connection, the ninja leader is constantly wearing a leather jacket with an ascot on around his neck. The biker villain dresses like a Michael Jackson music video villain at all times and comes off as a complete pansy through out the film. No one is menacing except for this one fat guy whose only threat is his sheer size.
Tough
As shown in the clip of the performance, the biker leader does not like that his sister is dating one of the band members. He decides that he should beat the bassist up at school to break them up. This leads to a disconnected string of events where the bikers and the band fight each other. The band ends up getting another band kicked out so that the band goes to the bikers for help. So there is another fight. These fights are all meaningless because you never understand the purpose of the fights. In between the fights, the plot is hardly ever progressed or developed so when another fight arrives you are wondering "Why?"
At some random point, we learn that all the band members are orphans of immigrants. The black character, Jim, receives a letter about his father's whereabouts. He cries. It is awkward and has nothing to do anything else in the film. How does the orphan status of these people connect to the biker gang? Hey...I thought the band was supposed to be fighting the ninjas. What happened to them?
Eventually one of the band member gets kidnapped and that is when shit gets insane. Throughout the movie, Kim and their trainer preach about peace and non-violence. The last 30 minutes of the film consists of our heroes brutally killing people. While attempting to rescue their fellow band member, our heroes stab a man, crush a man, and drop the biker gang leader out of a 3 story scaffold.
Afterwards, the band gets word that Jim's father is coming into town to visit his son. On the way to pick up the Jim's estranged father from the airport, the band is ambushed by ninjas where each ninja is massacred. When Jim is nearly killed, Kim and the bassist literally lose their shirts and start slaughtering people. The bassist stabs a ninja so hard, blood squirts all over his face. Kim does some Cherkov's Gun maneuver's to slay the ninja leader who bleeds like a fountain out of his gut.
As cool as the last 30 minutes of the film were, they had no context. The band never went after the ninjas because of their gang violence as the movie description states. The ninjas are only in the first and last scene of the movie. It is revealed that the ninja and biker gang leaders are brothers but the only importance of this fact is that it explains why the bike gang hangs out with ninjas. While that is an important plot point, there is just one sentence about this connection in the movie and seems to have no importance; the film could have easily deleted this scene. Hell, sister of the biker leader seems to have no knowledge of this and neither of the brothers even look remotely related. Everything in the film is just a disjointed plot point that seems to only exist to that our heroes can fight more idiots.
A similarly weird facet of this film is the ADR (dubbing). It is god awful. There are many scenes when two people are staring at each other without moving their lips and there is dialogue being played. There are also scenes where the dialogue is nowhere close to the movements of the mouths. In an interesting twist on this horrid post production, there is a scene where the two gang leaders walk into a bar and have ADR dialogue. The actors continue to talk but the sound dialogue randomly ceases and we just have two actors mouthing at each other.
When trying to reconcile this bizarre nonsense, I came to the conclusion that this film was originally designed to be a different movie and was re-purposed. This would explain this non existent story, awkward scenes, and shitty ADR. I decided to do some research and discovered the true tragedy of this film.
According to Wikipedia, Kim was approached by some dude with the idea to do a film with the Taekwando master. To create this film, "Y.K. Kim borrowed from friends, took out loans, spent all of his savings, and mortgaged his school to produce the film. Kim had never made a film before. Erin Sullivan of the Orlando Weekly said that Kim "had no idea what he was doing". Kim said that he hoped to find a distributor so the film would play nationally, but hundreds of distribution companies and studios rejected the film, including all of the major film distributors and several smaller distributors. Kim said in a questions and answers about the film that "Every distribution company rejected it after screening and said to me, 'Don't waste your time. Just throw it away; it is trash.'"
Kim was hopeful upon release and expected the film to be hit. However, the movie bombed hard and Kim lost a majority of his money in the fiasco. The movie was quickly removed from theaters and lost to time until some people did a mystery bid on eBay that turned out to be this film which was then re-released. The awkward scenes and ADR were a result of Kim constantly reworking the film before release to make it a masterpiece and get some support from distributors.
I think this movie had a lot of potential but while there was definitely enthusiasm for the film from Kim, it desperately needed a direction. The acting was piss poor, especially by Kim, the ADR clips are all delivered flattly, regardless of the scene context, the movie has no plot, and has the most contradictory ending of all time. After Kim and the bassist bath in the blood of the ninjas there is a final message that states something along the lines of "To end needless violence, we must practice peace".
Here are some other random oddities about the film:
- The acting and ADR for the parking lot and beach scene make me believe no one in this film has ever spoken or interacted with a human being before.
- Who is the main character in this film?
- Everyone in the band plays shirtless but they all have gross bodies.
- In both emotional scenes regarding the Jim's father, his pants are undone.
- At one point a band member states "It is freezing outside" and in the following scene they are all in a convertible with the top down.
- The band is never all present at fights; the fights usually involve only 3 members.
- Where was the lead singer in the final hospital scene? Did he die during the kidnapping? Why did no one mourn him?
- When the group is ambushed by ninjas, Kim says "Oh no, ninjas" in the tone of April from Community implying that 1. He is not scared and 2. Ninjas are not a rare occurrence in 1980s Florida.
- There is a scene where Kim is on stage and grabs the black guy by the nose with his foot and then rubs his foot all over his face. There is another scene where Kim is literally forcing grapes into everyone's mouth.
- Everyone is constantly embracing each other's hands.
- Everyone knows Taekwando, even the random club owner.
- They are supposed to be in college but look 40.
- Everyone on campus treats the band like celebrities.
- "They don't make buns like that in the bakery"
- There is an awkward training session with 3 of the band members where you are not sure if they are sparring or practicing. At times, Kim blatantly misses his training partner's face to insinuate training but then there is some foley work implying he is actually hitting them.
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