By Geno McGahee
The 1980s was a great time for action movies. It was a good time for movies in general. It was about 30 years since I’ve seen NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER, with the only memory I’ve retained was the fact that Jean-Claude Van Damme was in it. This was before his action star run. So, he started as a lot of action stars do…a foreign bad guy. In this, he is Ivan the Russian and he’s way more of a badass than Ivan Drago, in my opinion.
Tom Stillwell (Timothy D. Baker) has a dojo and teaches karate but has an odd outlook on it. He is all for teaching how to fight but doesn’t want any of his students to fight, especially his son, Jason (Kurt McKinney). Unfortunately, Tom has no choice but to fight as three goons enter and demand ownership in his dojo. Tom tells them that he’s not interested but they won’t take no for an answer. A fight breaks out and Tom is doing well against the bearded creepy goon, but Ivan has had enough and kicks the hell out of him. He then breaks Tom’s leg and roughs up Jason a little too. It’s fight or flight and Tom opts for flight and leaves town, starting over again in a new place with his son.
Immediately, Jason makes a new friend. R.J. (J.W. Fails) offers to help Jason move and discovers that Jason is obsessed with Bruce Lee, having a poster of him on every wall. It was sort of troublesome. I can see one poster. Maybe two. But having Bruce Lee wallpaper and watching Jason lie in his bed and just think of his hero was disturbing. It was a good thing that Lee was dead at this time. He would have had this weirdo show up at his house I bet.
After Jason shows R.J. his stuff and R.J. shows him that he’s a great dancer, the two walk away with their arms around each other. That was a little quick. Usually, when you meet a new friend, an arm around embrace doesn’t immediately happen. You have to know the person a little better because your arm around their neck leaves you vulnerable for the new friend to reach down and give you a how do you do.
Scott (Kent Lipham) is fat. That’s the point of this film. They insist on telling you that Scott is fat and that all fat people are slobs. He is constantly eating and getting food all over his face. He also has an immediate problem with Jason and an ongoing one with R.J. Remarkably, Scott is also studying karate. Why not? Just because he’s learning karate doesn’t mean that he doesn’t stop eating endlessly. By far though, Scott was one of my favorite characters. As much as some would object to the portrayal of an obese young man, I found myself laughing and Lipham seemed to take the role in stride and have fun with it.
Scott and R.J. get into and the chase is on and it’s hilarious. R.J. is jumping over obstacles and Scott tries with the first one and succeeds. Construction workers congratulate him for the achievement and he loves the accolades. It was awesome. I started rooting for Scott to beat the shit out of R.J. As he prepared for the next jump, the people are screaming “you can do it.” He does make the jump but R.J. slides a skateboard under his feet and he falls on his ass. Damn, the feel good moment was over.
Jason and his dad keep fighting over karate, but coverage of a karate tournament comes on the TV and it inspires him and it’s one of the most fucking hilarious things I’ve ever seen. Ian “Whirlwind” Reilly (Ron Pohnel) is celebrating in the middle of the ring. At first, you see a big crowd that is obvious bad stock footage and then they show him in the ring of an obvious empty gym celebrating and playing to the non-existent crowd. It was so awesome.
Unfortunately, Jason’s visit to the gym doesn’t go well and he gets beat up and leaves. He wants revenge but when his dad throws all his karate gear outside he has to find another place to work out. He finds an abandoned house and sets up and he is visited by the ghost of Bruce Lee. This is when the film goes from super funny to shit. As great as it sounds that the ghost of Lee would show up, the film has a lot of training montage filler that kills the momentum. I was laughing so hard up to this point and then it died. It took me a lot to get through it without fast-forwarding.
After being fully trained by Lee’s ghost, Jason is now ready to show his skills and he is forced to when a karate tournament turns to chaos. Ivan enters and beats everyone’s ass but this is tested by Whirlwind Reilly, which doesn’t set well with his bosses. They insist he kill Reilly. So, he knocks out the referee and gets a chord and wraps it around Reilly’s neck and starts choking him out. The mob bosses love it. It’s ridiculous. Their point was to show that they are the karate gods and that they have the best fighter. Why would they support the idea of Ivan killing somebody in the ring and knocking out the referee? Did a murder in an amateur tournament mean that much?
Jason has no choice but to jump in and now it’s Ivan and Jason, one on one and there will be no retreat and no surrender. Ivan starts off strong and does some of the same dirty tricks, but the training of Lee’s ghost proves useful along with some minor smack talk from Jason. He calls Ivan “Russian” which really pisses him off. I thought he liked being Russian. They call him Ivan the Russian. Maybe he felt that Jason didn’t have any right to mention his country of origin or wasn’t really Russian and didn’t like them too much. Whatever the case, it got into his head.
No shocker. Jason wins after R.J. screams “no retreat, no surrender!” Ivan is out cold outside the ring, the crowd charges the ring and starts throwing Jason up in the air over and over and over again. Now, if they were willing to charge the ring to celebrate, why the fuck did they not charge when Ian was being choked out? He needed the help!
NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER is awesome 75% of the time with the 25% of the Bruce Lee ghost proving to be boring and painful. Had the movie just maintained the momentum and fun it had for the first 60 minutes to the end, it would have been one of the best, but it wasn’t too be. I highly recommend this film but I highly recommend fast forwarding through the Bruce Lee ghost stuff.
