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No Retreat, No Surrender
Karate Tiger
USA / Hong Kong 1986
produced by
Ng See-Yuen for Seasonal, New World
directed by Corey Yuen
starring Kurt McKinney, Jean-Claude Van Damme, J.W. Fails, Kathie Sileno, Kim Tai Chung, Kent Lipham, Ron Pohnel, Dale Jacoby, Peter Cunningham, Timothy D. Baker, Gloria Marziano, Joe Verroca, Farid Panahi, Tom Harris, John Andes, Mark Zacharatos, Ty Martinez, Bob Johnene, Dennis Park
story by Corey Yuen, Ng See-Yuen, screenplay by Keith W. Strandberg, music by Paul Gilreath
bruceploitation
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Jason (Kurt McKinney) just admires Bruce Lee ... and a world breaks
down for him when he sees his father (Timothy D. Baker), a Karate sensei,
being brutally defeated in a match over his dojo by the Russian henchman
(Jean-Claude Van Damme) of a New York MMA organisation, and then instead
of fighting back he flees LA to resettle in Seattle (the town of Bruce
Lee's grave). Hey, dad even forbids Jason to ever fight ... easier said
than done when Jason and his best friend RJ (J.W. Fails) are constantly
bullied by a local fat kid (Kent Lipham) and his arrogant karate teacher
friend (Dale Jacoby). They even manage to drive Jason and his girlfriend
Kelly (Kathie Sileno) apart - and Kelly just happens to be the sister of
local karate champ Ian (Ron Pohnel). Ian of course has problems with the
same New York MMA organisation Jason's dad did, but he challenges them to
a public fight ... Jason meanwhile feels down on his luck, so he goes to
the grave of Bruce Lee, prays to him, and his ghost (Kim Tai Chung)
appears and teaches him how to be a martial arts champion. From then on
everything looks upwards for Jason, he gets back together with Kelly, and
he saves his dad from the bullies that threatened him, so dad lets him
fight again. And then it's the night of the big fight, and one after the
other, the Russian takes Ian and his students down ... until Ian can't
take it no more and he - Bruce Lee-trained - beats the Russian to a right
pulp ... Being at the same time an uninspired rip-off of the
less-than-perfect Karate Kid and a piece of weird bruceploitation, No
Retreat, No Surrender, though a Hong Kong co-production, ably shows
what was so very wrong with Western martial arts films: The plot as such
made little sense, the martial arts shown in the film focus on violence
and training sequences rather than the energy, dynamics and beauty of it
all, plus the whole thing is for no reason at all forced into a
coming-of-age story that's so full of clichées it's almost
vomit-inducing. And I don't even want to start about the musical score of
middle-of-the-road eighties pop overly designed to click with a young
audience ... but I just have to tell you how utterly hilarious (for all
the wrong reasons) the training sequences with Bruce Lee's ghost are - not
sure why anyone could have thought this was a good idea. Oh, and as for
the cast ... let me put it this way: Jean-Claude Van Damme is not the low,
the worst, the most wooden in this one by a longshot. Seriously, in his
rather one-dimensional role as fighting machine he hits more notes right
than most of his colleagues. Now in a way, this is probably the perfect
document for bad 1980's martial arts cinema - but it's also really hard to
sit through.
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