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No Retreat, No Surrender (1986)

Dir: Corey Yuen

Tom Stillwell (Timothy D. Baker) runs a Martial Arts school where his Son, Jason (Kurt McKinney), is a pupil.
Local gangsters want to take over Tom’s building but he refuses to sign the papers, and so they set Ivan The Russian (Jean-Claude Van Damme, in his feature debut) on to him and Ivan breaks Tom’s leg.

Fearing for his family’s safety, Tom decides to pack up and they move to Seattle.
Jason, who’s a huge Bruce lee fan, keeps up his training in the garage and makes a friend in RJ (J.W. Fails), a young Black lad who’s into really bad Hip Hop and spends half his life on a skateboard with the sun gleaming off his ’Soul Glo’ afro perm.
Jason does not manage to make a friend of local bully and all round slob Scott (Kent Lipham) though. Scott hangs around eating whole chocolate cakes by himself and dripping burger grease down his chin while calling Jason a ”Bruce Lee freak”.

Jason tries to enrol into the local Martial Arts school run by champion fighter Ian Reilly (Ron Pohnel), but Assistant Trainer Dean (Dale Jordan) is tricked by Scott into thinking Jason has been disrespectful to the School, thus ruining his chances to join.
When Jason also takes an interest in Reilly’s Sister Kelly (Kathie Sileno), whom Dean also fancies, Dean, Scott and the other local dumb-fucks become a major thorn in Jason’s side as he tries to obey his Father wishes not to fight (“Fighting is wrong”!) while also lacking the skills to beat his tormentors when he does respond.

Things get even worse when the gangsters that strong-armed Jason’s Father turn up in Seattle, trying to do the same to Reilly and his School, and plan to level the competition by taking over a Martial Arts tournament, where their Russian weapon Ivan is expected to destroy any and all opponents and take Reilly’s School.

But then, with the call of “Sensei Lee! You have to help me”, Jason calls up the spirit of Bruce Lee himself to help aid him in his training to combat Ivan and the gangsters….

 

Outstandingly popular even today (and giving birth to a number of unconnected sequels), “No Retreat, No Surrender” is perhaps the most 80’s, 80’s action film as you will ever see. And this is something that adds charm where normally it would now be missing but also ensures that there is plenty of content that has aged so badly that it now only works on a ‘so bad it’s good level’ and as enjoyable camp.

If one character more than any other ages the film (in fact, music aside, he’s by far the main culprit in general) it’s the annoying as hell RJ, who does not even do anything or use to the plot.
His impromptu bit of break dancing (yes, it does include the moonwalk) and rapping in Jason’s garage works only, ONLY, on a ‘so crap it’s barely acceptable’ level. And when he later dresses up as a Michael Jackson wannabe (or was it Janet) at a nightclub you do find yourself wishing a large rock would magically drop onto his head.
In fact that whole nightclub scene is an 80’s music, 80’s attitude, 80’s fashion hell! Again, only camp entertainment value now exists.
But it’s not just the nightclub music that is bad, the entire score is highly dubious and only the fact that it is so entertainingly dire manages to move it up to camp value and thus saves the film from being killed.

The whole Bruce Lee idea of course adds a big dollop of goofy charm to things as well, but it does throw away the realism the rest of the film has been building up, no matter how comic strip based that realism may be.
Is it really meant to be the spirit of Lee? He does seem to interact with solid objects and hold things up, but that is one hell of a lap into otherwise absent fantasy.
And lets face it, if he isn’t there then Jason has gone well and truly ga ga!

Of course the fact that it plainly isn’t Bruce Lee (in fact it’s Lee’s body double replacement in “Game of Death 1 & 2”, Tai Chung Kim) would not be such a problem if we had not been bombarded before his appearance with images of the real Bruce Lee. something hammered home when a confused Jason looks at his Bruce Lee poster when ’Spirit Bruce’ first appears and only hen realises it is in fact Lee standing in front of him, despite the fact the two guy’s look nothing like each other!

The appearance of ‘Spirit Bruce’ of course launches us into the classic ‘disciple in training’ sequences and, although a long way from the real deal Chinese/Hong Kong movie take on such things, they are pretty effective and fun to watch and McKinney pulls off some nice acrobatics.
And as it’s the 80’s we also have an AOR backed training/fitness montage that adds some classic 80’s American cheese to the traditional Chinese set-up.

Action wise some of the fights involving non-martial artists being used as simply punch bags are a bit weak as the actors are pretty obviously not hit and also waiting for the blows to ‘land’.
But the fights involving the actual Martial Arts actors are rather good and most importantly lots of fun.
McKinney handles himself well (his entrance into the ring during the finale is especially good) and Van Damme shows off his admittedly good acrobatic and leg work to marvellous effect as the gangster’s attack dog.

The serious threat of the aforementioned gangsters though is sadly very late in coming (70 minutes into the film in fact) with rather too much of the film taken up with the more petty hassles Jason has with Scott and Dean (that actually have very little in the way of direct pay-off as far as Jason is concerned) and Jason hanging out with RJ.
This is not really a cut and dried criticism of the movie though because it’s obviously being aimed at a much younger audience due to the age of the lead characters and their general teenage problems, and on that level the film is fine and (mostly) well paced. But be aware of this before you go in expecting a tough fight film.

Given all that the violence in the film is minimal for the most part, although the finale does have some pretty damn bludgeoning moments where nasty Ivan goes postal on his pre-Jason opponents. Van Damme is spot on at portraying Ivan's theatrical arrogance as well.
And having top class Hong Kong action director Corey Yuen at the helm (although this is a long way from many of his great HK movies) means the fights have a technical flourish not always seen in American Martial Arts films.

Acting is uniformly stinky, with Timothy Baker as Jason’s Dad being one of the worst offenders, and once again don’t expect serious adult performances from the leads. But at least the obnoxious Scott and Dean are essayed in such broad strokes by Lipham and Jordan that their heavy presence in the film’s first half is kept entertaining.

So we have a very dated film (that adds both pros and cons when watched today) and a film that is more teen flick than serious smack down.
But it still manages to be very entertaining movie (with the weird addition of ’Spirit Bruce’ ensuring a fun time) and even pulls off a few moments of impressive Martial Arts during the finale thanks to a fresh looking Van Damme and McKinney’s athletic abilities Basically it’s undemanding, fun, bright and breezy entertainment that just oozes 80’s cheese from every pore.
Definitely worth a look and hey, how many Martial Arts flicks can you name where the hero gets sent to his room for misbehaving!