After the son of Japanese martial arts master Tanaka (Roy Chiao) dies, American Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) pleads to him to be trained in the art of Ninjutsu. In a show of gratitude and a way to honour his master, Dux travels to Asia to compete in the Kumite, an illegal, underground combat competition that invites the finest fighters in the world to compete every five years. There, he befriends tubby Vale Tudo fighter Jackson (Donald Gibb), but finds himself pursued by two ACID officers Helmer (Norman Burton) and Rawlins (Forest Whitaker), who want to bring him back to America to face punishment by the army.
After appearing in roles such as Spectator in First Dance Sequence and Gay Karate Man, Van Damme took his first starring role here after his proper début in No Retreat, No Surrender (1986). His inexperience shows as he puts in a rather horrific, wooden performance, managing to convince the supporting characters of the fact that his character is America, but certainly not the audience watching the film. But he wasn't hired for his acting talent, but for his frequently astonishing fighting ability. He has never looked in finer shape, as he displays his trademark ability for high kicks and bollocks-stretching splits. And this is something that works for the film as a whole, as nobody really cares about the story, we just want to see some decent fighting.
What is so endearing about the film is the way it harks back to the 1970's kung-fu movies from China and Hong Kong, notably the formidable output from the Shaw Brothers Studio and tournament movie Enter the Dragon (1973). There are many silly and frankly inexplicable moments, especially in the intrusive romance between Dux and reporter Janice Kent (Leah Ayres), a pointless and contradictory character (clearly the movie was in need of a leggy blonde). This is a bad movie, but it managed to deliver much more than I was expecting - plenty of blood, sweat, homo-eroticism, the colossal Bolo Yeung, and more slow-motion "aaaayyyyeeeeessssss!" than I could count.
Since 2006's Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone has been on a nostalgia trip, re-visiting the characters and genres that catapulted him to the A-list in the 1980's and early 90's. After his rather average yet commercially successful homage to cheesy action - 2010's The Expendables - Stallone and his crew are back, with some extra recruits and some familiar (and aged) faces from the genre. Thankfully, Stallone has passed the director's chair to Simon West, a director who has plenty of experience in blowing shit up with the ridiculous yet irresistibly enjoyable Con Air (1997). If there was a main problem with the first film, it was that Stallone's action scenes were messy and confusing, hardly akin the kung-fu-inspired action of the 1980's.
After returning from a successful mission in Nepal, new recruit Bill (Liam Hemsworth) announces his retirement at the end of the month. Shady CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) forces group leader Barney (Stallone) into taking a mission to recover a mysterious item in a crashed plane located in Albania. The group, including Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), Toll Road (Randy Couture), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and newly appointed technical expert Maggie Chan (Yu Nan), are ambushed by international criminal Claude Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme) who kills Bill and flees with the retrieved item. Gradually the team uncover a plot to find a storage of plutonium left over from the Cold War, and the enslavement of a nearby town by Vilain.
Early rumours that Stallone was going for a milder tone to allow a younger audience to see and enjoy the film are quickly dashed with an opening scene full of exploding heads and CGI blood. Stallone loves his blood and explosions - that was clear from 2008's almost pornographically gory Rambo. His goal was to aim higher and bigger with the sequel, and while on a whole it is pretty much on par with the first, the scope is certainly larger and the giddy in-jokes are more outlandish and obvious. The film is certainly full of love for the genre that was so good to Stallone, and what person that grew up in the 1980's and 90's would not smile at the sight of Planet Hollywood's Stallone, Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger mowing down bad guys side-by-side?
Yet it is at times so ridiculous and self-consciously cheesy that it comes across as a parody of itself. Schwarzenegger and Willis steal each other's catch phrases ("I'll be back!"/"Yippee-kay-ya") and Stallone even cracks a Chuck Norris Facts joke, and while these are funny, it takes the edge off the action and creates a feeling that none of these characters are really going to be in any real trouble. While Mickey Rourke sadly departed the project and Jet Li only briefly appearing, the addition of Chuck Norris and an actually very impressive Van Damme certainly compensate (the latter adding to his surprisingly moving performance in JCVD (2008)). But the film is crammed with far too many characters that pushes the whole Expendables crew minus Stallone well into the background. It won't stop me watching the upcoming third instalment, but this is no more than an amusing way to kill 90 minutes - much like the films it's playing homage to.
After the success of The Karate Kid (1984), the martial arts film became a staple of Western mainstream cinema. Of course, the West was first properly introduced to this Eastern form of action cinema in 1973 through Bruce Lee, but the trend in American action cinema really kicked off (pun intended) after 1984. (It was of course exacerbated by the 1980's visual and political fad for hard, large bodies in action films - Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Lundgren et al.) Hong Kong actor and director, Corey Yuen, takes elements from The Karate Kid, throws in (and hugely insults) Bruce Lee ideologies and techniques - through the spectre of the master, - and produces an incompetent film that fails in both of it's sub-genre tagging of an action film with drama.
The film opens in a karate dojo in Los Angeles, where a "crime syndicate" intrude on a lesson which is held by Tom Stillwell (Timothy D. Baker). Who knows why this crime organisation would antagonise a karate establishment, but they drive the family, not only from their training space, but entire city: The Stillwell's move to Seattle - conveniently the resting place of Bruce Lee, as the young Jason Stillwell (Kurt McKinney) is a devoted fan. With the gift of a broken leg, procured from the syndicates henchman, Ivan (an obvious reference to the previous years Drago in Rocky IV (1985), both Russian hardbodies, and played here by "newcomer" Jean-Claude Van Damme), Tom's son, Jason, is free to train in the garage, and quickly makes friends with the neighbourhood black stereotype, R. J. (J. W. Fails) - introduced carrying a ghetto-blaster (very 1986 - and "black"). The both of them become the target for the local angry fat guy, who is again stereotypically introduced with a cake in his mouth - like his fatness didn't act as its own visual signifier.
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).
After appearing in roles such as Spectator in First Dance Sequence and Gay Karate Man, Van Damme took his first starring role here after his proper début in No Retreat, No Surrender (1986). His inexperience shows as he puts in a rather horrific, wooden performance, managing to convince the supporting characters of the fact that his character is America, but certainly not the audience watching the film. But he wasn't hired for his acting talent, but for his frequently astonishing fighting ability. He has never looked in finer shape, as he displays his trademark ability for high kicks and bollocks-stretching splits. And this is something that works for the film as a whole, as nobody really cares about the story, we just want to see some decent fighting.
