Miami Connection

When I first saw the trailer for 'Miami Connection," my mind was literally blown. I knew the 1980s was a wasteland of Troma garbage and horrible B films, but this film had something more than your run of the mill awfulness. It was epic. It was beautiful. It was bad 80s pop music, complete with bad feel good lyrics you might see in some TV show, the kind of song a writer comes up with on the spot because that's what they think the "youth" music sounds like. Never mind the bad acting, editing, and overall quality of the film transfer--that was something I was expecting. What I wasn't expecting was the bad after school special side- plots, the rampant homo eroticism, the most bizarre and random gang of thugs ever assembled and the sheer 80s-ness of the film. What I really loved was the over acting by the extras in the film. They must have known that they would never get another chance to be in a film, so they hammed it up for all to see.

Now I will remind you, if you aren't into watching films that are bad enough to make Mystery Science Theater 3000, then you surely will not get the sheer awesomeness of this awful movie. If you like straight comedy or action films, then I suggest you stay away and save your money. As for the rest of us, enjoy.

Miami Connection is the perfect storm of ugly people, bad acting, stupid dialogue, horrendous action sequences, and bargain basement special effects. I wasn't sure who to root for: the evil drug lord and his retarded henchmen who are painfully clueless and inept at the simple things like being threatening on any level - or the gangster ninjas who show up and steal drugs and money from the drug lord and easily demolish the loser henchmen - or the "heroes" of the flick, the awesomely awful and culturally diverse synth rock band the Dragon Sounds who I just wanted to watch get sawed in half a la the Scarface "shower scene."

Best lines include: "they don't make buns like that down at the bakery" and "my mother was Korean and my father was Black American"

God I love this movie, it has everything a true cinephile could ever dream for. Enjoy.

I took one look at the cover art and immediately knew what kind of film I was in for when I saw the ninjas riding motorcycles. With such a campy premise, it's impossible to take seriously.

Mark (Y. K. Kim), Tom, Jack, Jim, and John are five orphan college students (even though the first two guys look like they're in their early 40s) all make up the band Dragon Sound and manage to accidentally piss off a street gang with connections to a group of coke dealing biker ninjas led by Yashito and his lieutenant Jeff. Making matters worse, in some loose romantic sub-plot, John is dating Jeffs sister, Jane, who soon starts singing for the band. Luckily, Mark is a Tae Kwan Do instructor and taught the band well enough to fight ninjas with swords so they're ready to kick butt and take names.

As expected, the action scenes are ridiculously corny and over the top, yet still fun to watch. The Dragon Sound members all pull off some pretty sweet martial arts moves even though some were muddled by blurry slow-motion effects. Plus, the final battle against Yashita was a disappointing one-sided beatdown in Marks' favor.

The shooting locations looked decent, even though most of the movie was shot in Orlando instead of Miami and lighting was poor at times. But to me, what makes this a little better than any other dime a dozen budget 80s martial arts flick was the great music. Dragon Sound had some awesome and catchy songs like Friends, Tough Guy, and Against the Ninja. The whole soundtrack just screamed 80s, even though none of the band members are actually playing their instruments except for Tom's actor, Aangelo Janotti. Still, the soundtrack earned six stars instead of the typical five I'd give a film like this.

But naturally, all the acting is awful. The "actors" all sound totally apathetic as they speak their lines and look bored most of the time, probably well-aware of what they signed up for. John even mutters "Oh. Ninjas" when Yashitas goons come riding up to them like he was reacting to the weather or something, and the sub-plot about Jim's long-lost father was too ham fisted to be affective. And if that's not happening, the cast tend to show exaggerated and goofy expressions during the fight scenes. For me, the most unintentionally hysterical moment was Jim's reaction to getting slashed across the chest and Mark repeatedly screaming his name afterward.

Speaking of which, it's no surprise that this was Y. K. Kim's one and only acting role. No question, he's a tough martial artist and does great in the fight scenes, but his Korean accent is so thick, you can't understand him half the time without subtitles.

I wasn't expecting this to be as good as other 80's martial arts flicks like Bloodsport or The Last Dragon. But if you're into "so bad, it's good" kind of action films with 80's rock music, then definitely one a watch if you're bored.

(51%) A crazy, 80's to the limit, Warriors/Streets of fire/biker movie/Godfry Ho style mess, filled with awful writing and laughable performers from actors that really should never feature in front of camera with more than one line each. On a plus side some of the action sequences are quite good, and the direction does draw out some nice shots from time to time, plus it's very simple fun. Anyone with any affection for 80's cheese that can see past the quite major problems (acting/writing/editing/quite terrible rock music sequences) will likely enjoy at least some of what this has to offer, while others should stay away.

An incredibly awful movie, but it's awful in the best way possible. Holy cow, do they get everything just perfectly wrong here. The nonsensical plot is as follows: a rock band made up of taekwondo experts (led by director Y.K. Kim) crosses a gang of coke-dealing biker-ninjas ("bikers by day, ninjas by night," as the intro song informs us) and has to fend for their lives. The acting is hilariously bad - one guy clearly keeps turning to read cue cards, for instance. The editing frequently cuts far too soon or lingers on far too long. The glorious 80s music I have already mentioned. There's also a song about how awesome friendship is (the five heroes all live in a house together, go to college together, play in a band and practice taekwondo - which they pronounce tayKWONdo - together) and a song about dancing ninjas. Most of the actors are actually martial artists, but the choreography is stilted (people pause awkwardly with swords to wait to get kicked in the face), and the film goes into slow motion for no reason. It's all very laughable and it moves quickly, which makes it quite watchable. This can be watched on Netflix - nay, must be watched on Netflix.