EDITOR’S NOTE: Secret Executioners was on USA Up All Night on September 7, 1990.
Director Lee Doo-yong’s The Trouble-Solving Broker was made in 1982, but then Godfrey Ho got his hands on it and cut 18 minutes away while adding in a ton of new fighting footage. That means, if I do my math correctly, more than half of this movie has nothing to do with what Lee Doo-yong made.
While the film is a victim of Godfrey Ho’s signature tampering, the original director was a heavyweight. After pioneering the taekwon-action genre with The Manchurian Tiger, he had evolved into a respected filmmaker with gritty dramas like The Last Witness. You can still feel that grit here—the movie is filmed guerilla-style on the streets of early 80s Seoul, capturing a visceral, neon-lit urban atmosphere that feels miles away from the staged Hong Kong inserts.
The story centers on a fixer—an illegal problem solver—played by Shin Woo-chul. Looking for all the world like a Korean Columbo in a rumpled beige raincoat, he’s hired to help market vendors who are being squeezed by a real estate scam. The heavy behind the extortion is none other than the legendary Hwang Jang Lee (Drunken Master).
While the core narrative centers on a search for a missing sister and a gang-level power struggle in the streets of Seoul, Godfrey Ho’s interference adds an extra layer of absolute chaos. Ho saw fit to insert new scenes featuring actors like Jim Norris—responsible for perhaps the most embarrassing snake-style combat ever captured on film—and some bizarre, high-tension filler that clashes wildly with the original movie’s grounded tone.
Secret Executioners is a mess, sure, but it’s a beautiful, hard-boiled, bone-crunching mess. It’s a time capsule of a Seoul that doesn’t exist anymore, punctuated by some of the most frantic martial arts sequences of the decade, like the eight-minute fight ending.
Also, as this is a Godfrey Ho movie, this has so much stolen music, including Tangerine Dream’s Thief score and Afromerica’s “Continent Number 6,” which is the sample that Kanye used in the opening of “Power.”
You can watch this on Tubi.
