No Retreat, No Surrender is mostly about the mob trying to take over several karate dojo's in order to use them as a legitimate front. They go about the taking over by intimidation, in usual mob style - although the heavies they bring along are both karate experts. One of those heavies is Van Damme. I'm not sure why he's working for the mob though, as, presumably to cover his accent up a bit, he's billed as 'Ivan the Russian'.
Anyway, once a teenager's dojo owning father leaves town to avoid a confrontation, the teenager goes to Bruce Lee's grave and asks him for help. Oddly enough, the spirit of Bruce Lee (who doesn't really look anything like him) appears in an abandoned house and trains the kid.
Then he has a fight with Van Damme, who should have been able to destroy him with his eyes glued shut. After the fight, the credits roll, but I imagine all the kids he gets into scrapes with during the movie looking at him with newfound admiration and subtly hinted homosexual overtones. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see that scene in one of the longer cuts available.
It's bad it's good. Straight from the Joey Tribiani school of 'smell the fart' acting, No Retreat features a terrible plot, terrible camera work and terrible acting. However, it's gone past being simply bad and has become funny.
If you enjoy crappy 80s action movies in a comedy kind of way, you'll probably enjoy it as much as I did. If you want an action movie, this ain't it.
It also has the distinction of having the worst picture quality I've ever seen on DVD. It looks like someone has transferred it from VHS; but not a new, pristine VHS, rather one that has been rewound and recorded over a few thousand times before being used to tape the movie off Channel 4.
Amazingly, it's spawned a whole bunch of sequels! I may just have to check them out next time I want a laugh.
My rating: 4.9 / 10
IMDB rating: 4.6 / 10
Running time: 79 mins
IMDB link
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