Samurai Cop

A word you will often see in critiques to dismiss a movie is “formulaic”. But this word is misleading as an insult. To say something follows a formula is like saying you don’t like dinner because it’s too rigid to a recipe. Plenty of wonderful movies follow a formula; the classics Alien — a sci-fi horror movie — and Predator — a brawny 80’s action flick — are, stripped of their trappings down to their formula, are slasher movies. Disney movies are so adherent to a formula, they practically can be played simultaneously and you’ll see the same beats get hit at the same time. The issue is not when a movie is formulaic, but when a movie doesn’t UNDERSTAND the formula. It’s why a movie like Halloween is amazing, but Pieces is painfully stupid; why Die Hard is fantastic, but Speed 2 is a war crime. The original Birdemic is a landmark of so-bad-it’s-good movies, because everything about the movie is done from an earnest place. The performers and director throw everything they have into making the movie, despite being an awful piece of shit. Birdemic 2, however, KNOWS it has no redeeming factors, and leans into it, embracing the camp ... and by doing so, it has not endeared itself the same way. It doesn’t understand that the formula for enjoyably bad movies doesn’t mean acknowledging the badness. Samurai Cop straddles the line. It is extremely formulaic, and delivers everything it does with the matter-of-fact honesty of people who are happy to act, regardless of where. But it also recognizes the conventions of the buddy cop action, and cranks the dial up to 11 on all of them. Every shootout goes through more ammo than a day in the Vietnam War. Every martial arts fight is preposterously violent. The hero is a homicidal lunatic, but a strict adherent to a samurai code. The captain is a mercurial hothead whose moods swing in ways that should get him 5150’ed. A busty female cop wants to have sex with everybody, and I mean everybody. And sex scenes? I don’t know that there’s a woman in this movie who DOESN’T show her tits. Showgirls has less nudity, and the sex scenes are less awkward too. The way the camera lingers on the female form in this movie is downright criminal, but also hilarious, because it’s so immature and obvious in rebelling in BEWBIES. It’s still a litany of bonkers bullshit, and it’s fun ... until it isn’t. The first hour or so is so full of bizarre dialogue, weird direction, ADR’ing for no good reason, editing that’s done seemingly at random, and acting choices that have to be witnessed to be believed. It’s only in the last act, where it just becomes a bland hail of gunfire and sword fights, that the movie drags like a tow truck in slow motion. When it’s fun, though, it is a BATSHIT INSANE carnival of stupidity. Everybody throws everything they have into making this all it can be. The dialogue is English, but also gibberish. Acting and direction seem to be ideas pulled out of a hat, like a game on Whose Line. It’s fascinating to watch things like the lead and his romantic interest have their first meeting, and the director is so focused on keeping the weird lion’s head on the wall in frame. Or the lengthy, awkward conversation with the maitre’d at the restaurant that dumps a ton of unnecessary backstory about the romantic interest by way of a Costa Rican guy so flamboyantly gay, he makes Liberace look like Macho Man Randy Savage; he should be offensive, but, as RiffTrax said, you can’t even identify him as human. The problem, though, is that enjoyably-bad only gets you so far. This is still a bad movie. It understands the formula. But it also shows another weakness with the idea of being formulaic: ONLY knowing the formula. It’ll get you a chuckle, but sooner or later, the preposterous earnestness will wear off, and you’re left with generic ingredients in a generic assembly.