The Challenge (John Frankenheimer, 1982)

I'm taking one of this site's occasional strolls outside of horror this week to talk about the splattery West-meets-East action extravaganza The Challenge. Besides being a blast that hits most of the expected '80s action movie beats while adding some of its own, The Challenge is a pretty unique assemblage of talent. Led by reliably enjoyable American actor Scott Glenn (shortly before making two commercial flops turned cult classics The Right Stuff and The Keep) and Japanese legend and frequent star of Kurosawa films Toshiro Mifune, the rest of the cast is made up of solid Japanese and Japanese-American character actors.

The screenplay was written by Richard Maxwell, who wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow, and John Sayles, the successful indie-film director (The Return of the Secaucus Seven, The Brother from Another Planet, Matewan, Eight Men Out, The Secret of Roan Inish, Lone Star) who also worked as a screenwriter on some of the best drive-in movies of the late '70s and early '80s, including Piranha, The Lady in Red, Battle Beyond the Stars, Alligator, and The Howling. The cinematographer, Kozo Okazaki, was a veteran who had been shooting films in the Japanese movie industry since 1940. He was also a frequent choice for Hollywood directors making movies in Japan, including Josef von Sternberg, Sydney Pollack, and, for The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, John Berry. Jerry Goldsmith composed the score, and, though it dabbles in some white-guy-trying-to-do-Japanese-music cliches, it also has some inspired moments. Look at Goldsmith's imdb page to see the complete, mind-boggling array of films he wrote music for, but a few of his best-known scores include Our Man Flint, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown, The Omen, Alien, Poltergeist, Gremlins, L.A. Confidential, and the Rambo movies. Directing this whole shebang is John Frankenheimer, the filmmaker behind The Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate, Seconds, The Iceman Cometh, French Connection II, and Black Sunday. Finally, the choreographer of several of the action scenes was a young martial artist named Steven Seagal. This is probably his finest work, unless you love bad blues guitar, terrible movies, reality TV shows about sheriffs, Vladimir Putin, sexual harassment, and/or energy drink sales.

Frankenheimer is a great director of action, but he was having some personal problems while making The Challenge, though it doesn't really show up on screen. An alcoholic, Frankenheimer blamed his increasing drinking problem for what he considered the creative failure of his previous movie, 1979's eco-horror Prophecy, about a killer bear mutated by toxic sludge going on a rampage. (Why have I never seen that one?) He continued to drink heavily during the filming of The Challenge, including while he was on set, and he checked into rehab after filming was completed. He struggled with his addiction for the remainder of his life but continued to work in film and television right up to his death in 2002.

The Challenge opens with a brief flashback sequence from 1945 that is explained later in the film but quickly jumps to a boxing gym in present-day Los Angeles. Rick (Scott Glenn), an employee of the gym's promoter/trainer (Pat McNamara) and probably an ex-fighter, is sparring with a young Japanese boxer who's getting a lot of heat and has a high-profile fight in Tokyo the following week. A Japanese brother and sister, Toshio (Sab Shimono) and Akiko (Donna Kei Benz), are scouting the fighter for non-boxing reasons of their own. Unfortunately for the promoter/trainer, Rick beats the hell out of the much-buzzed-about fighter after withstanding his early momentum. Ruining the guy's rep before his big fight turns out to be a career-killer, and Rick gets fired. He shrugs it off and returns to his skid-row dive apartment to eat cold chicken, drink beer, and watch his black-and-white TV ("it doesn't get channel 11 or 14").

Toshio and Akiko knock on his door. They wanted to hire the young guy, but after seeing what Rick did to him, they now want Rick. Their family has been searching for a particular sword for almost 40 years, and they found it in LA. It belongs to their dad. Unfortunately, their uncle and his goons want the sword, too, and the siblings want to pay Rick a decent daily sum of cash to take the sword to Japan and fight off any punks who try to steal it until it's back in the hands of daddy. Rick accepts the job.

Hey, guess what? The family wasn't entirely upfront with Rick, and things start getting crazy the second he leaves the airport in Japan. We get kidnappings, chases, stabbings, excited closeups of fish mouths, sword battles, family feuds, corporate intrigue, partial burials, beheadings, training montages, double and triple crosses, youth mentorship, arcade game playing, sake drinking, eel slurping, live lobster eating, and even a little romance, including a dimly lit sex scene with a body double. It's what classic '80s action is all about, baby.

The movie's events basically come down to a pissing contest between two brothers over a material possession, but the way Toshiro Mifune, as the big daddy, Yoshida, and Atsuo Nakamura, as his brother Hideo, sell it, you will see this sword belonging to one of the brothers as the most important issue of our time, or any time, really. Yoshida does not engage with the modern world, and runs a tough, disciplined school for warriors of the sword. People train with Yoshida for life. This ain't Pilates or hot yoga. If you follow Yoshida, you live the sword, brother. Meanwhile, Yoshida's brother Hideo is a billionaire CEO and fixer for the underworld, who runs the commercial and criminal life of Japan from a modern compound with the finest office supplies the early 1980s had to offer. He believes in money, power, control, and having all the swords. He doesn't give a shit about Yoshida's code of honor or way of life. He just wants the sword because he has the companion sword and it pisses him off that he doesn't own both. What a dick. Unfortunately, he shares his brother's ass-kicking sword skills. (Side note. In many '80s action movies and comedies, rich business jerks are the villains. People kept voting for Reagan anyway. We're a deeply confused society.)

Rick is stuck between a rock and a sword place. Hideo and his goons are going to turn Rick into American chopped salad if he doesn't get them the sword. But he respects Yoshida, wants to learn his ways, and has the hots for Akiko, and she likes him, too. What will he do?

Yeah, the movie hits a lot of familiar places narratively, and the character of Akiko, otherwise a smart woman with serious fighting skills, becomes a familiar damsel in distress by the final third, and, yeah, there's a bit of cornball sentimentality with the child actor, but The Challenge is otherwise pretty great. Scott Glenn plays the character with just the right balance of naturalism, goofy humor, anger, cynicism, and warmth. He doesn't play too ridiculous or too serious, and he guides the film's tone. Frankenheimer makes the visuals pop and moves through the excellent locations with punch and style. He knows when to keep the camera still and let the audience take in the action and when to move the thing at breakneck speed. I don't like admitting it, but I gotta give it to Seagal, the fight scenes are great. Nice choreography, bozo.

The thing that really puts this movie over the top is the final fight scene. I tend to get bored with the climactic showdowns in most action movies, sci-fi spectaculars, or action-oriented comedy and horror films. The buildup and character detail and early action scenes tend to have more interest and visual zip for me than the inevitable Big Showdown. Too many of them play like bored ticking off of boxes on a list. The Challenge on the other hand skillfully builds to an incredible final scene with an unusual location, exciting action, and wildly crazy and unpredictable moments. We have two older guys in samurai robes fighting each other with swords in an '80s-modern city-of-glass office building, then some crazy shit happens, and Scott Glenn also gets in on the sword fighting. Office supplies are destroyed and/or used as unexpected weapons, and the violence gets gnarly and brutal. It's a tour-de-force scene that changes the movie from a fun but sometimes predictable action movie to a truly memorable one.