There are a million bad movies and Samurai Cop manages to stand out from the pack because it truly feels like it was written and directed by a 12-year-old boy. It’s not just the clumsy filmmaking or the bad writing. Everything about this gives off the impression that the director has no idea how the real world works. He doesn’t know how jobs work. He doesn’t know how men and women flirt with each other. He has no concept of camp or irony. He’s a virgin who’s never been in a fight making a movie about an action hero cop who gets laid all of the time.
In reality, the director was a 61-year-old Iranian named Amir Shervan. This was his final work in a twenty-four-year directing career that took him from his home country to the US, where he turned out a brief, but steady, string of low-budget independent action flicks that eventually became cult favorites for their klutzy lunacy and how they take all of the cop B-movie cliches and run ’em hot, the needle way into the red. Bad movie-loving giggle-machines LOVE Samurai Cop. Personally, I’m not one of those types, but even I think this is entertaining, inept action scenes and all.
So, it’s about this cop. And (spoilers) he’s a samurai brought in by the LAPD to combat their rising Japanese gang problem (just go with it). He also has the thickest head of long hair I’ve ever seen on a man who isn’t in Bon Jovi. He also enjoys the snug and supportive feeling of high-waisted men’s bikini swimwear. He also kills at least five people every time he’s on the job, which annoys his eternally exasperated police captain a tad. He also knows how to celebrate a girl’s birthday. He also is such a maverick that even his employer and closest co-workers have no idea where he lives.
He’s our hero and, with plenty of help from the film editor, he can beat up anybody.
In between fluffing his hair, he gets mixed up in rival gang violence, as well as inserts Tab A into Slot B with the big villain’s pretty blonde girlfriend, who spends about half her screen time here as a bikini model, Shervan’s camera conducting a serious study of her butt. All of this leads to our precious samurai cop being marked for immediate death.
WHAT IN LIVING FUCK HAPPENS NEXT, OH MY GOD? See the movie and find out. I refuse to reveal the fact that Captain Speedo wins in the end and will live on to take many more walks on the beach with his latest sexual conquest. You won’t hear a peep from me about that, no sir.