User Reviews

OK this movie has it's flaws and numerous they are.

The cars - are we supposed to believe that even a factory modified Porsche 928 can top 200mph? The budget of the characters & locations - a guy that owns several exotic cars has an office in LA which consists of 1 desk with 1 phone and 1 chair with NOTHING else in the room at all, no pictures no filing cabinet. It looks as if a lot of the budget went to hiring exotic cars for filming.

However look past these flaws and the story is actually quite good.

A cop loses his cop brother to persons unknown and embarks on a crusade to clean up the roads. He targets drunk drivers, and especially the runners.

He runs into resistance from the new captain who sees the runners as a nuisance and would rather he targets the easy arrests - drunk drivers.

As a result through insubordination he gets fired but gets reemployed by the DEA to mount a sting operation on the head of the runners who they suspect uses the 150mph runs to ship drugs between LA & Vegas.

He sets out to infiltrate the runners and bring them down.

Sure the car races/chases are speeded up comically - cars driving between at legal speeds made to look driving at 130mph plus however the cars are incidental.

It's not going to set your world alight but it is a half decent movie at just under 90 mins long and it's well paced (neither too long or short).

Altogether, "Banzai Runner" qualifies as a deadly dull crime chase thriller. Dean Stockwell stars as insubordinate, back-talking Nevada Highway Patrol cop Billy Baxter (he wears the NHP shoulder patch even though the DVD box label claims he is a California Highway Patrolman) who is obsessed with tracking down the speed demon that killed his brother in a highway accident a couple of years before the plot unfolds here in Phillip L. Harnage's shallow screenplay. Predictably, Baxter's obstinate, by-the-book boss doesn't approve of Baxter's vendetta. Eventually he fires him when our hero takes a joyride at 200 MPH. This leaves poor Billy high and dry without a job. Along comes his ex-wife who wants half of his house as a part of the divorce settlement, and then in walks the DEA with a proposition for Billy to go undercover, bust these road racers, and get himself out of hock. Naturally, Bill accepts the proposition without a second thought and goes undercover with his nephew. The nephew likes to catch a buzz smoking marihuana and there is a brief argument between the nephew and Billy's latest squeeze. Billy and his nephew manage to infiltrate this ring of road races, and Billy sets up a deal to buy a butt-load of cocaine. Just as the deal is about to go down, the villain's wife informs on her husband and Billy races off to save his son who has gone to buy the coke. Talk about a lack of foreshadowing, much less motivation on her part. One of the girl's here gets her kicks by stripping every time Baxter's nephew drives 10 miles over the speed limit. However, "Banzai Runner" neither has any nudity nor do the filmmakers explains its Japanese title. The photography is substandard, with too much head space in the compositions, and the shadow of the camera and crew is obvious in one scene in the desert. Stockwell doesn't cut it as an obsessive cop, but he can at least act. The only other two actors with any credibility are the villainous Billy Drago as a trigger-happy road racer and souped-up car mechanic Charles Dierkop from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." The only thing that director John G. Thomas does right is show off fast sports cars in several careening scenes that look fast but do nothing to enhance the film's lack of suspense. Much of the story occurs off-camera, for example, the death of Billy's brother. Most of the supporting cast looks like they haven't spent enough time in front of the camera to behave with any sense of credibility. Indeed, there is a happy ending to this 87-minute melodrama, but as a whole "Banzai Runner" proves to be a bore. Put the brakes on your wallet before you buy this superficial potboiler.

Thank god it was only 1.99 for the DVD. Even at 150% speed up, one of the worst hours I've ever spent. Only one high point, the Milf in the 80's Lavender dress on the side of the road. Just too many untied plot points and an implausible "He Knows You're a COP" by the aforementioned MILF. Have to agree with the "It's Not so bad it's good" rating. Remember USA UP ALL NIGHT®? Even they wouldn't show this stinker. The case has the tag line: "When Speed is the only thing that counts" Here is a prime example why there is a war on drugs; only it should target movie makers who don't use them cuz this one is only good if you're high.

(SPOILERS!!!!)

Well is a nice "B" movie, i like Dean Stockwell in films like "Dune","Paris, Texas" and "Blue Velvet". Is a bad movie, but have great cars chases and the script is not bad at all, in my opinion i think that "Banzai Runner" is much better that "Fast and Furious", in other way, i think that Dean Stockwell saves this film a little bit, cause in a way or another is a good actor, and good actors difficult become bad actors in bad movies, except Jeremy Irons in "Dungeons and Dragons". Well, this is a good movie to a good fan of "chase movies", and if you like great cars and good car chases see this film, is entertaining... And, one thing more, what a hell is a banzai runner? Some kind of a Japanese road runner? ;p

Billy Baxter (Stockwell) is a likable Highway Patrolman who is getting fed up with two things: drunk drivers and so-called "Banzai Runners" - rich guys with crazy-fast cars who zoom by at 150-200 miles per hour between L.A. and Las Vegas. Perhaps one of the reasons Baxter has such a vendetta against them is that his brother was killed in a road accident and now he takes care of Beck (Shepherd), his son. When the top brass declines Billy's request to soup up his police cruiser so he can keep up with the Banzai Runners, Billy decides to go rogue: he turns to friend and mechanic Traven (Dierkop) on the sly. The eccentric Traven agrees to put in a turbo engine, but then Baxter is forced to turn in his badge (we don't think he had a gun).

Now free to take down the speeding suckers his own way, he goes undercover to infiltrate the shadowy world of Banzai Runners. While there, he comes face to face with Syszek (Drago), the evil 'Runner. Now with Beck at his side, and their girlfriends (Schneider and Kenworthy) more or less against them, the time has come...will the Baxters put an end to all this Banzai Running once and for all?

Banzai Runner was a pleasant surprise and part of the reason why continually hunting down 80's VHS tapes is still worth doing. Is the movie an earth-shattering experience that will forever change the way you look at life? No, but most movies aren't that anyway. What Banzai Runner is is an unpretentious, enjoyable gem and a worthwhile way to spend 90 minutes or so.





As some sort of cross between Midnite Spares (1983) and No Man's Land (1987), Banzai Runner is a fast-cars-vroom-vroom movie of the type that the male gender is always accused of loving above all others. There's actually a little more going on here than that description would imply, but it would be nice if Banzai Runner was given a bit of credit for being a precursor to the Fast and Furious franchise - and all at a tiny fraction of the budget of those blockbusters.

It all starts with an appropriately high-speed intro, but the presence of Dean Stockwell as the main character gives the film some grounding and gravitas. The whole thing has kind of an off-kilter, unusual vibe that we really liked. It's really the type of movie you can't do today, and that's a shame.

Yes, it does drag (no pun intended) a bit in the middle, but that's a common problem and easily overlooked. Especially in light of the introduction of "speed stripping" into the popular consciousness. Evidently this is when if the driver of a car stays over the speed limit for enough miles at a time, the passenger has to strip. This isn't to be confused with another car movie, Strip N' Run (2000) with Michael Madsen. Anyway, this can also be noted as yet another movie where Billy Drago plays the bad guy.

There is some really cool and catchy music on the soundtrack too, including by a band named Los Bad Jamming , who sound like a slightly more aggressive ZZ Top. The score itself isn't bad, but it would have been perfect if it had a Tangerine Dream-style synth score. To date, neither the score nor the soundtrack songs have been released on any format, which is unfortunate.

It was the go-go 80's, so of course there are going to be movies about fast cars and fast women and all that. But the organic, straightforward, and almost unassuming charm of Banzai Runner make it worth seeing.