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Well, Samurai Cop defies these conventional barriers by simply.ignoring them. It opens with a fight scene, heavy with all the tension of two infants fighting over a piece of celery. This is followed by a seven minute car chase. And not just any car chase, but one so proudly inept that I was almost forced to applaud out of compassion, the way you would at a fourth grade choir recital. The dialogue is word salad, akin to the way a nine-year-old assumes adults speak when there are no children around. All attempts at humor are either mildly racist, wildly misogynistic, or an impenetrably stupid combination of both.

There’s attempt at sexual tension between Joe and a hospital nurse that can only be described as “the most excruciating 64=5 seconds of my life.”

Samurai Cop clearly takes some inspiration from Lethal Weapon, with Joe and his African-American partner Frank (Mark Frazer) exchanging the kind of racial banter that would be awful years before this appalling script was ever written. Every female character is a walking sex doll whose only desire in life is to please the men around them, either through sex or violence. Of the two main female characters, only one of them even has a first name. This is not a story per se; it’s an adolescent sex and violence fantasy, written by someone with an adolescent’s understanding of both.

Scene after scene drags on pointlessly, hovering on minor plot points that take the story nowhere. The film’s score sounds like it was borrowed from Street Fighter 2. There are so many obvious gaffes - flubbed lines, prop problems - that you’d think would be addressed, but there clearly wasn’t money for it. Another six months of fundraising might have improved this film appreciably, because much of the frustration in watching Samurai Cop comes from the obvious fact that nobody was prepared to make it. Halfway through that lengthy car chase, I found myself pausing to look up random license plate numbers online to see if they were still in use.

But most importantly, at no time did the Samurai Cop do any actual Samurai Copping. Sure, he swings a sword around a couple of times, but I’m not sure why the “Samurai” hook was even necessary. This story is generic enough that they could have called it “Insert Adjective Here Cop”; it would have made no difference. I thought I’d seen terrible films, but I was a fool. I knew nothing. I couldn’t even bother to be offended by all the crass humor and bad jokes, because none of it is even good enough to BE offensive. I felt nothing but pity for the people onscreen, and the fact that this low point in their lives will remain documented forever.

Samurai Cop is a legitimately heinous train wreck. I’d say I regret watching it, but it’s been a long week and I DID need to unload on something. So thanks, Samurai Cop. You have given my angst a voice and for that, I suppose I must thank you.

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