What an incredible shitty movie. I don’t mean incredibly shitty, although it is, but an incredible example of substandard cinema. It’s inept and outrageous in all the right spots. Behind it is yet another tale of filmmaking perseverance that laughs in the face of personal doubts and industry gatekeepers. It’s not a good movie, but it is entertaining, and that is the first purpose of film.
According to the internet, so it must be true, Korean immigrant and Orlando businessman Y.K. Kim, who owned a number of taekwondo studios in the area, appeared on a South Korean talkshow promoting a book on taekwondo. One of the viewers happened to be Woo-sang Park, a filmmaker with over a dozen credits. Park was inspired by Kim’s interview, contacted him, and convinced him to collaborate on a movie. Kim took to the project with gusto, working on the story, raising money using his business as collateral, working hard to try and get distribution, and, after Park moved on to other projects, directing reshoots. The result was Miami Connection.
First released in 1988, the film garnered little interest from distributors, and was close to being a lost film until the folks at the Alamo Drafthouse got ahold of an old copy. Some back and forth with Kim, who thought their interest was a prank, and the movie was cleaned up and re-released in 2012. Once again, bad movie mutants save the day.
This flick is scatterbrained, but the jist is this. A gang of, I shit you not, bikers by day and ninja by night, led by the mysterious Yashito (Si Y Jo), rob a cocaine deal in Miami. They take the coke and head straight for Orlando, where they hook up Jeff (William Ergle), who leads a 
gang of camo-clad toughs. Jeff’s sister, Jane (Kathy Collier), sings for a band called Dragon Sound, which features Mark (Y.K. Kim), Jack (Joseph Diamand, who also wrote the screenplay), Jim (Maurice Smith), and Tom (Angelo Janotti). The band’s bass player, John (Vincent Hirsch), is dating Jane, and Jeff doesn’t like that, which sparks tension between his gang and the band. Meanwhile, another band had been the house act at the club Dragon Sound plays, and they, led by a character billed as Old Rock Band Leader (Jack McLaughlin), join the conflict so they can get their old gig back. All of this results in all-out martial arts war on the streets of Orlando, escalating to a deadly conflict with Yashito’s biker ninjas. Got all that? Good.
Astute readers will have noticed that this flick takes place in Orlando. What’s with the title? Well, it takes place in Orlando, but the opening scene very much establishes a connection to Miami. This flick could have been filmed in Cleveland for how tenuous that link is, but Miami will always be cooler than Orlando, so Miami gets the nod in the title.
Miami Connection sets itself up as a film about the war on drugs, but that ends up being as tenous as the title. The film is really a grudge match between Dragon Sound and anyone they annoy. Mark is not only a member of the band, he’s also their martial arts teacher, with all the Eastern philosophical leanings that entails. The five male members of the band are all orphans, live together in the same house, and attend classes at the University of Central Florida. They are a family, and the battles against outside forces share a common theme with many martial arts flicks. Whether or not the plot congeals in a meaningful way is beside the point. It’s the in-group versus the out-groups, and the more fighting, the better.
In between the fights, which are their very own flavor of inept, a viewer will experience ham-handed acting (Kim’s performance is precious, as he can barely speak English), non sequiters galore, and the laughable majesty of Dragon Sound’s music. The most memorable of these tunes was by the Lloyds Richards Band, with a couple tracks featuring actual music from Collier and Janotti. It’s the most generic 1980s guitar-driven synthpop imaginable. My favorite lyrics are from Escape from Miami, the film’s opening theme:
Bikers by day, ninjas by night
Swift and fierce, not afraid to fight
Steal all your cocaine along with your life
Strike with no mercy into the night
But there is also Tough Guys and Tae Kwon Do Family. Each is a sublime track totally in synch with the overall tone and quality of the movie, and help push this flick into true shitty gold territory.
Between the acting, script, production quality, music, and behind the scenes perseverance, Miami Conneciton is the total package. It’s just about everything I enjoy from a shitty 1980s action flick, kin to movies like Hard Ticket to Hawaii or Champagne and Bullets. It sails into the top half of the Watchability Index, displacing Doom: Annihilation at #87. Check it out.