After being humiliated in a Seattle dojo, Jason faces his martial arts incompetence by imploring rather loudly at the grave of Bruce Lee. Not only does the film think it has the right to get a tenth rate actor to spew garbage dialogue at the concept of Lee, but the film makers film these scenes in front of his actual gravestone. Having cried in front of Lee's grave, his training with the spirit (the ghost) of Lee. This is insulting on so many levels, but Tai Chung Kim who plays Sensei Lee tries quasi-admirably under the circumstances. Nothing much really happens between the bookended crime syndicate scenes (they only appear in the first and last scenes of the film). There's the ubiquitous training montage; a disco involving break dancing; a pathetic and infantile love interest, and a minute amount of fighting - a really small amount.
Jean-Claude Van Damme's Russian fighter and his criminal gang's leaders reappear at the end of the film to challenge the Seattle-based karate dojo to a fight in the ring. Van Damme's Ivan against all three. Of course he beats them easily. Luckily, Jason, newly trained by the ghost of Bruce Lee, is in the audience, and ready to fight him. No Retreat, No Surrender manages to insult and bore its viewers in a multitude of ways. Everything about the film is incompetent. The acting is appalling, there is little to no dramatic tension or narrative complexity, and the characters are simplistic stereotypes of action/martial arts cinema. The big threat of the film, that crime gang that I guess is supposed to offer the characters tension and cohesion, only appear at each end of the film. Even the one thing that this type of film is supposed to offer, fighting, only really occurs at the end (with a few rubbish bits from beginning to end), but this doesn't really present anything interesting choreographically, and is easily outdone in thrill and action, even by mediocre fight films such as Bloodsport (1988).
Directed by: Corey Yuen
Starring: Kurt McKinney, Jean-Claude Van Damme, J.W. Fails
Country: USA/Hong Kong
Rating: *
Marc Ivamy
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