Story synopsis in one paragraph (may be a bit spoilery): A martial arts master owns a karate dojo in LA, he teaches kids, including his son. He gets a proposition from some shady crime business guys that they want their dojo, or at least him to cooperate with them, by signing a contract. He refuses and in turn he must be taught a lesson.. Van Damme breaks his leg. His son (the protagonist) wants revenge, but his father stops him. The father (dojo owner) being an honest man and feeling ashamed of his defeat in front of his students, but mostly scared about his family, decides that the best option is to leave his hometown. So the family (himself, his son and wife) move to Seattle. There both father and son make new acquaintances. Father finds job in a local bar. The son continues training and tries to join a new dojo, but due to some newly found enemies he's beaten and humiliated twice, once during a fight in the dojo and lastly on a party of a girl he started to like. He isolates himself, seeking an answer in Bruce Lee's grave in Seattle cemetery and after a while the ghost of Bruce Lee has apparently come to his aid. Training montages one after the other follow, weeks are passing by, things between father and son start to get better, especially after the son saves his father from a fist fight he had with some fellas from the bar. Then the original bad guy from LA comes in Seattle seeking the contract of that dojo as well and he's determined to take it. He meets the owner, who is the brother of our protagonist's crush and the Seattle Karate champion, and since he clearly refuses he threatens his sister. In the meantime, our protagonist has trained hard and has seemingly become tough and he kind of goes out with the love interest. Finally a Karate exchibition/tournament is held between Seattle's fighters (the best 3 of them) and Van Damme alone. Van Damme single-handedly takes em all out (he had a hard time with the 3d one - the champion - but he too falls), but all of a sudden our hero steps into the ring to save the day ultimately throwing Van Damme out. The result is he is congratulated as a hero and the movie ends in a "Rocky"-like fashion. The best thing in the movie are the good, meaty, fast-paced, authentic fight scenes throughout. Most actors seem to be capable of real fighting, or at least they must be athletes of some kind. Only one thing i noticed is that in some scenes Van Damme can be subtly seen to hold on to his kicks a bit though, as not to inflict full damage on the actor. But overall the fights are well choreographed and executed. And that's primarily what this film is all about, martial arts. The protagonist's black friend must be a dancer, or something similar. Also Van Damme here is in one of his first appearances in film ever. Note that this is not a Van Damme movie, Van Damme only appears for ~12 minutes tops. The movie is very similar to Karate Kid, but much inferior. Karate Kid could actually stand as a solid movie. This one, objectively as a movie, is terrible, but if you look at its spirit and what it wants to deliver, primarily entertainment and 80s energy, it does a decent job. Acting is so atrocious, it may even compete with porn movies. Van Damme keeps a wooden, hateful face throughout, which NEVER changes. All performances are very pretentious and they're trying to be. The bad guy desperately acts like the bad guy, the good guy acts honest and decent. There's no grey areas in the characters, there's no depth in them, mostly only black and white. Silly, funny comedy. The love interest is the only decent one. The father especially is literally shouting (instead of talking like a normal human being) throughtout the entire movie. His whole dialogue is shouting. He does it, as to appear more dramatic (80s B movie logic). His performance is so bad, it's actually hilarious, the guy is screaming, no joke. However the movie does possess a certain 80s charm who will definitely appeal to the fans of the genre. The omnipresent 80s montages to cheesy music (even break-dancing) during the training sessions. Aside from that sunny atmosphere, the occassional laugh and some mild romance. You can respect it for that. The final fight is so unrealistically funny bad, it's unbelievable and so hilarious you will laugh your ass off. You see this kid, who's got like zero muscles and Van Damme with muscles that could knock the kid's teeth out with a single punch. But instead, he brings into mind the teachings of Bruce Lee's ghost and coupled with his friend shouting from the audience "No Retreat No Surrender!" the kid becomes Rambo at an instant and hurtles J.C.V.D. out of the ring. You saw that coming, but of couse the plot is extremely predictable. This was really a chinese Hong-Kong movie, chinese director & writers, just filmed in USA. Without a doubt an 80s guilty pleasure movie! Rating: 4/10 - Failed - A guilty pleasure movie of mine though, for Van Damme, the fights, entertainment and 80s nostalgia.

The basic plot of No Retreat, No Surrender is horribly familiar with bits of silliness thrown in for good measure. It goes something like this: a young man in a new town is pushed around and made to feel an outcast. Through training, hard work, and the help of Bruce Lee's ghost (who he prays to?), he makes himself into a karate expert. In the end, he alone will be forced to face-off against the New York-based karate thug to save the Seattle dojo from being taken over by organized crime. Sound ridiculous? It is.I must be missing something, because I'm at a loss to explain all the positive comments on IMDb for No Retreat, No Surrender. Other than some pretty decent fight choreography, I can't find much else positive to say about the film. I know it was one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's first roles, but let's be honest, outside of the fights at the end, he's barely even in the thing. The acting is pathetic, some of the characters are cringy, the dialogue sounds like it was written by a 10 year-old, and the whole Bruce Lee's ghost bit is beyond ridiculous. It doesn't help that the dude they hired to play Bruce looks nothing like Bruce. A real stinker.

To say the acting in this movie was bad would be giving NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER a huge complement. It was just about the worst I have ever seen, and I don't think it's even close. If you want a few laughs, put this one on -- it's as bad as it gets. Interaction between characters was a joke. The fight scenes were slow and predictable and contained no serious action or authenticity. But the the downright awful acting takes the cake. Just over-the-top terrible. Unbelievable.Van Dam doesn't show up until the middle of the film and plays a bad guy...what?

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).www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com