So it’s come to this 1987’s Miami Connection, a film that, in a tale as old as time was an obscure action picture with a crazy background that bombed at the boxoffice and was considered lost for years, but then got rediscovered and re-established as a cult classic for audiences to fawn over, going even so far as to have had a luxury TRIPLE disc 4k bluray release in recent years… A collaborative effort between director Woo Sang Park and Y.K. Kim the story goes that the pair bashed out Miami Connection (predominantly shot and ACTUALLY based in Orlando Florida…go figure) in a flurry of inspiration driven creativity. Y.K Kim was a somewhat famous martial artist in the Florida area with a string of successful Tai-kwon-do studios, in fact he was so loved that when the idea of a film came up, the local government in Florida at the time basically gave him full access to the city, to shoot in any public space without the requirement of a permit.

And so! With a script that appears to have largely been written in binge sessions and carte blanche to shoot where they like, the pair got to work! With Kim bringing in students from his Dojo to play most of the main cast members and extras. The filming for ‘Miami Connection’ was a thrilling rip roarer of a business…aaaand then it all kind of went tits up. Y’see…Woo was only in the country for a brief time and returned to Korea almost immediately after filming wrapped. That’s all well and good…except for the fact that some of what was shot needed to be RE-shot…and, so the legend goes, at a backer led private screening to show funders what their money had paid for, the original version had a totally different ending which almost ALL of the backers STRONGLY disliked. The resulting negative feedback left the film in a bit of a state of turmoil because Y.K wasn’t a filmmaker. In fact he’d done NOTHING in terms of working in film up to this point apart from starring in this movie as Mark.

So…he learnt. He took books out, read up on film theory and how to operate cameras, and with a skeleton crew he covered off the reshoots and rewrote/shot a completely new happier ending that the backers were more comfortable with. You’d think that would have solved the problem right? well…Miami connection was released to a limited number of theaters, entirely distributed, promoted and fully funded by Kim himself (rumoured to be in the millions…but i’m sceptical about that) and the film. Bombed. HARD. NO ONE went to see it, The critics who COULD be bothered to attend screenings trashed the thing as garbage and the film failed to secure any kind of widespread home distribution, leaving Kim MASSIVELY out of pocket and essentially holding an unsellable film.

Jump to 2009 when a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse by the name of Zack Carlson was browsing around on online auction sites and spotted a 35mm copy of some movie called “Miami Connection” that he’d never heard of on sale for a mere $35. Carlson picked the film up on a whim and after checking it out, put it on for a screening. Some people came, they loved it, so he screened it again, more people came…and slowly, but surely the film developed a VERY active and invested fanbase.

Zack wanted to try and get the film out there to more people, and managed to find and contact YK.Kim who was still deeply hurt by the films flop, didn’t want to talk about it and thought that the calls from the Alamo Drafthouse were crank calls. It was only after much effort and negotiation that Kim came round to the idea that this may not be a prank and shortly thereafter the film was released to the world for the first time as a limited home release. The results of which saw the film’s popularity EXPLODE.

The plot of ‘Miami connection’ isn’t exactly the most coherent. Its base plot of “Good guys are targeted by ruthless bad guys, With the power of friendship conquering all” is probably one of the oldest types of story archetypes in writing. The problem is this film goes off in EVERY possible direction while trying to tell that plot. Whether it’s just the guys randomly eating breakfast in their shared house for 10 minutes, or the Miami Ninjas riding hogs into town for a silly amount of time, the whole thing could not feel more made up on the fly and odd if it tried.

The key driving force in this film is that Jeff, working on behalf of the Miami Ninjas, wants Dragon Sound off his turf…for some reason. It’s implied he thinks they’re either dealing on his patch, or he thinks that their “nice guy” attitudes will ultimately lead to confrontation and an uncovering of their shady business. But that’s never confirmed through the runtime, and Dragon Sound seem almost as confused as the audience for the most part as they aren’t selling drugs nor do they have ANY clue who Jeff and the Miami Ninjas are outside of Jeff being Jane’s “Shady” brother.

And it’s weird gaps in knowledge like that which plague this film chronically. SO much of the film is basically just “Don’t read too much into it, just go with it” and that can be refreshingly liberating almost as much as it can be frustrating. As soon as you accept that there are going to be plot points in this that don’t really go anywhere or are just happening because the films underunning then things become MUCH more tolerable, but if having a consistent plot that makes sense and ties everything up in the end is your bag, I think you may be in for a rough ride.

The act structure for this pictures all over the place, there’s a clear opening and closing act, but the 2nd act isnt defined anywhere near as well as it should be. There’s no real change of pace, it just kind of feels like the first act keeps going and going until the trigger point that signals the 3rd act happens. And that can be frustrating because, as an audience member the act structures help to signal where the viewer IS in the picture through subliminal coding.

The first act is *Supposed* to be slower as we’re introduced to our core cast, maybe throw a couple bumps in to help keep people interested. But it’s expected by the audience that first acts take their time in establishing things. Because, as we’ve seen with movies like “Halloween Night” and “Boarding House” just infodumping 20 characters onto the audience in a 5 minute window and then expecting them to just “get on with it”. Seldom if EVER works and often leaves the viewer feeling turned off by the thing before its even really begun.

The 2nd act should have a marked change of pace, things should speed up a bit, we’re familiar with our characters and the scenario that’s been presented, now’s the time to hit the gas and get right to the heart of the action, if you don’t rev up here, or WORSE you somehow manage to rev down and go slower STILL. Your audience will get impatient wondering what’s going on and why it’s taking so long to actually have a point or be interesting. This should then lead to a 3rd act and like any good orgasm, things should be warmed up, cranked to max speed and firing on all cylinders as we arrive at the point the previous 60 or so minutes have been building to.

Once you’ve hit that peak you have options on how to close the film, you can either warm back down to a satisfying but steady conclusion, or you can go out with a bang keeping that high paced speed rolling. But the important thing is that you pick a lane and stick to it because if you don’t put everything and the kitchen sink into your 3rd act, audiences who…lets be honest are generally not the most forgiving people in the world, will forget any goodwill they had for the opening of the film and wonder why the movie they’re watching suddenly gave up and ended crap.

Miami Connection Opens strong, it sets the characters up, builds its world and begins to establish a scenario and then…it just kind of idles around that area with the occasional garnish of “So bad it’s good” style delivery or brief scenarios that aren’t all that relevant punted in for good measure. It means that around the hour mark, when the film should be moving into its 3rd act. I was still wondering when the 2nd act was going to start. As we get locked into a repetitive cycle of Dragon Sound getting challenged to a fight, them being confused, a fight happening anyway, the band getting the upper hand for a bit until the baddies leave or someone breaks things up, rinse, repeat.

I’m not saying there isn’t fun to be had with that. But that idling really stalled the viewing experience for me, it tanks the pacing (which was already screwed..but more on that shortly) and just made my mind wander a bit until the 3rd act suddenly jolted 50k volts into this thing. Which is fine, but when the credits rolled and the best thing I could think was “Well..it opened and ended well” that kind of leaves a rather large hole in the middle of this movie.

The pacings shonky as well. Like I mentioned earlier I don’t know how much of this script was planned WELL in advance and how much was just “We have a gap in the runtime we need to fill” or “I have an idea, get the camera.” but there’s no natural flow to the sequences in this film, scenes just kind of happen…one minute you can be watching bikers in a bar drinking beer and throwing topless women around like sacks of oatmeal, the next it could be one of Dragon sound eating a baloney sandwich in a park talking about intercontinental friendship, the next it could be the owner of a club beating up a previous act, the next it could be someone reading the mail for 5 minutes. Stuff just kind of happens in the order it happens in because that’s just how the cards have fallen.

The repetition makes it even harder to really manage the pacing problems because, if Jeffs gang “jump” dragon sound at 10 minutes in, when they jump them again at 25 minutes, 45 minutes and an hour in EXACTLY the same way, intercut with shots of John doing his taxes or Mark just working out. Well, it doesn’t exactly instil me with the idea that these guys were making a clear and defined vision here…

Again though; that ISN’T to say that fun isn’t to be had with this thing, there are PLENTY of over the top crazy goofy and just plain odd moments that I thought were good fun and the film does have some real charm running through it that did endeare me. The on/off ramblings about friendship were a definite highlight for me personally and, well…im always a sucker for a slightly creaky picture. I may not 100% get on with the script, but I absolutely get on with the sincerity behind it.

On the direction front, it’s not bad! Not bad at all! Woo has managed to just about cultivate an interesting and largely professional looking project. Even if the script may be lacking, quite often the visual direction will help pull the film’s socks up and point it in the right direction, with the dragon sound music videos and the end sequence in the forests being definite highlights. It’s far from an engaging and “studio” grade experience. But compared to similar movies, with similar scope and budget. This thing does a really solid job that made me want to come back for more.

Direction of the cast by contrast is a bit more of a mixed bag with most of the cast being made up of students from Kims studios who’d never acted before in their lives before this. It’s fair to say this is a bit of a crap shoot as to who’s able to act and work to director instruction and who’s here basically to make up the numbers and try their best to not completely throw the film out of whack. For the most part, it’s about fine. Almost none of our core cast feel particularly “natural” in front of the camera, they almost all feel awkward, a bit stilted and unsure about what’s “in frame”.

This is particularly noticeable in the fight scenes themselves which absolutely have no sense of ‘mojo’, almost like when someones learning a dance routine for the first time, the fight choreography in almost all instances didn’t flow naturally. It’s almost like you can hear the cast members going “Move 1…okay onto…move 2!…okay!…now move…3!…ace! Right move 4!..” which really affects the vibe and pulls you as an audience member RIGHT out of the action. While they do use soft contact here to help make the punches and kicks look at least a bit believable, sometimes they choose the wrong angles in the edit and the result makes those punches and kicks feel like they have all the weight of a feather behind them.

Throw in some random effects filters such as frame dropping or slow motion and you end up with fight scenes that just feel WAY too heavily planned, being handled WAY too awkwardly by a cast of characters who aren’t looking or feeling confident and, up until this point, weren’t even actual actors.

The cine was somewhat lacking too for me…while I thought the music video sections were handled VERY well. Everything else just feels kind of flat. We see the same shot types over and over again which was disappointing, experimentation is pretty much left to video effects and given how much of the marketing emphasises “cool neon 80s!” In its branding there’s not really a lot of that on show, instead most scenes are either day for night blue, or just kind of beige and brown. Composition is uninspired with basic framing applied and seldom anything else, they don’t really follow traditional shot setups and it feels like the crew knew how to do two lighting setups, Day for night and “floodlit” because that’s all that’s here really.

Performance wise…look, no one gets out of this with much in the way of dignity. The only standout performers for me in this were Kim and Maurice Smith as Jim…and it’s not because they’re brilliant performers. It’s because they’re the cast members who I feel would most fit into an episode of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. The rest of the cast range from muted to awkward and just plain weird! Sometimes it works…sometimes it doesn’t. But on the whole, if you’re not one for cheesy oddness in your action movies…firstly; what are you doing watching 90% of commercially available action movies?…but secondly!…this maybe isn’t your rodeo.

And finally; the soundtrack! C’mon man! It’s Dragon Sound! 80s pop rock at its finest, seriously if you want the quickest way to figure out if this movie is for you, go boot up a spare tab and look up their track “Friends” it’s one of the first songs in this movie and it’s INCREDIBLE. Very much in the camp of “The Shimmy Slide” in terms of some of the most iconically funny and weird (but damn good) music ever put to film. And that pop rock edge envelops the whole movie. Seriously this is one HELL of an OST and I seriously regret not nabbing it on Vinyl when I had the chance!

‘Miami Connection’ Somehow managed to get a VERY limited VHS release at some point in the very late 80s or Very early 90s (though even collectors arnt 100% on exactly when that release came out) it was distributed by a company by the name of “Liberty Entertainment Group” and after that it fell into total obscurity until 2012 when it was issued on Bluray by Drafthouse films. That quickly went out of print and started going for silly money, and throughout the 2010’s the film would get multiple releases as “Limited edition” VHS throwback style issuings.

Finally in 2022, like buses we got not just one but TWO separate releases of Miami Connection within months of each other after a near decade long drought. One being from Umbrella Entertainment, which was just a standard blu ray release, and the other being a 3 disc 4k blu ray box set released by Vinegar Syndrome (which is the version I own) and this things just gorgeous. While I personally didn’t see *THAT* much difference between the bluray and 4k versions, I put that more down to a bloody good job having been done on the bluray release than a shoddy job being done on the 4k disc. When you consider that the original negative for the film was destroyed in 2004 and that this was a bit of a patchwork restoration. It’s understandable that this wouldn’t exactly be immaculate. The first two discs contain 1080p and 4k versions of Miami connection alongside commentaries, making ofs and much much more. The 3rd blu ray disc contains an early cut of the movie with alternate scenes, and other oddities which is perfect for the average die hard Miami connection fan who wants to try and see the film from a new perspective!

Ultimately; While Miami connection is an absolute hoot with some really fun moments, solid direction and just daft and over the top performances that charmed and enthralled. It wasnt one that ultimately won me over. I enjoyed it, I’d watch it again…but I didnt out and out LOVE it. Your milage may vary however and I hope that what both me and Triv have said here will help you make an informed decision! But, for me? While I had a bit of a soft spot for Miami connection, I didn’t feel like I out and out LOVED it in the way that many other fans of this movie do. It absolutely had its moments and the soundtracks amazing. But that second act is SUCH a hodgepodge of repetition and the cine varies in quality so much throughout that pound for pound, I just think there are better strange action movies out there. This would probably pair really well with something like “Day of the Panther” as a double feature, but it wouldn’t strictly be something I think I’d watch on its own…not for a while to come at least

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/miami-connection/1/