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Retreat, No Surrender (1986)
aka: Ring of Truth; Karate Tiger
Starring:
Kurt McKinney, Jean-Claude Van Damme, J.W. Fails, Kathie Sileno, Timothy D.
Baker, Kim Tai Chung, Ron Pohnel, Dale Jacoby, Peter Cunningham
Director: Corey Yuen Kwai
Action
Director: Mang Hoi (as Harrison Mang)
No Retreat, No Surrender is best known as being Jean-Claude Van Damme’s first major film role, after having working as an extra in movies like Breakin’. It is also the first film made for the Western market produced by Seasonal Films, the same studio that produced Jackie Chan’s first big hits: Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master. Moreover, it inadvertently started the trend in which Hong Kong action directors looking to work in Hollywood would work with Van Damme for their maiden project.
The project started when martial artist Keith W. Strandberg got his degree in Chinese Language and Literature (with a minor in Oriental Philosophy) and spent a year in Taiwan. During this period, he got it in his head that he wanted to be a martial arts actor. While working as a tour guide in China, he found himself several times in Hong Kong, where he talked talked to numerous studios about his ideas. Seasonal Films head Ng See-Yuen liked the idea of making an American film—after all, the Shaw Brothers had collaborated with Hammer Studios during the previous decade and Golden Harvest was making Hollywood movies of their own at the time. Strandberg found himself taking on the role of screenwriter, transforming an original idea from Ng and director Corey Yuen into a screenplay for “Ring of Truth.”
The movie starts off in Los Angeles, where Tom Stilwell (Timothy D. Baker, winner of Tak Kubota's bare-knuckle IKA World Cup) runs a karate dojo. His son, Jason (Kurt McKinney), is one of his students and a Bruce Lee nut. This usually results in Jason doing his own thing during sparring exercises, which drives his dad up the wall. One day, Stilwell receives a visit from a New York-based syndicate, who wants to absorb the dojo into their own business. Tom refuses gives them the finger and tells them to take a hike. Their response is to send in their top fighter, Ivan Kraschinsky (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who breaks Tom’s leg. Now a cripple, Tom moves his family up to Seattle for a fresh start.
Jason quickly makes friends with an African American break dancer named R.J. (J. W. Fails), who is targeted for bullying by a fat slob named Scott. Apparently, there was a scene in the script where R.J. accidentally tripped Scott in the school cafeteria, thus earning his ire. But as the scene was never filmed, Scott’s hatred of R.J. simply makes him look like a colossal (heh) racist. When Jason signs up for karate lessons at a dojo run by Ian Riley (Ron Pohnel, a student of Chuck Norris), Scott, who happens to be a white belt there, fabricates all sorts of lies about him. This earns Jason the ire of the school’s acting instructor, Dean Ramsey (Dale Jacoby, who holds high rankings in Tang Soo Do, Chinese Kenpo, Chinese Boxing, and PUMA Karate).
This comes to a head when Jason starts dating Kelly (Kathie Sileno), Ian’s little sister, whom Dean has been trying to nail for a while. Ramsay humiliates Jason at Kelly’s birthday party. To add insult to injury, when Jason’s dad learns that his son has been in a fight, he gets mad and tries to throw away all of his Bruce Lee memorabilia. Nevermind the fact that a) he didn’t start the fight and b) he really didn’t even fight back, given Dean’s skills.
With the help of R.J., Jason moves all of his equipment to an empty house, where Jason starts to train himself. At that moment, he receives a visit from none other than the ghost of Bruce Lee (Kim Tai-Chung, of Tower of Death and Bruce and Jackie to the Rescue). Bruce teaches Jason jeet kune do and soon the latter is a kung fu dynamo. This is good, because the Sensei Ian’s success on the tournament circuit has attracted the attention of the Syndicate. If Reilly does not want to end up a washed-up cripple like Tom Stilwell, he may need the help of one of Bruce Lee’s students.
No Retreat, No Surrender received a Stateside release in 1986 to generally negative reviews. Most critics dismissed it as a slapdash rip-off of The Karate Kid with elements of Rocky IV and The Last Dragon. Those criticisms are understandable, if not entirely fair. The movie was filmed in 1984, which local critics may not have been aware of. In broad terms, the film is extremely similar to The Karate Kid and Keith Strandberg was probably influenced by that film’s success as he adapted Ng See-Yuen’s story treatment into a screenplay. The bit about the Russian villain may be a case of convergent evolution: Seasonal Films had been including Russian villains in their films ever since The Secret Rivals. Strandberg may have known about Rocky IV’s production and tried to beat that film to the punch, but without reading the story treatment itself, we may never know. And any similarity to The Last Dragon is purely coincidental, as far as I’m concerned.
Despite its similarity to contemporary American sports films, Corey Yuen film directs the film as if it were a Drunken Master clone circa 1979. The entire subplot about Jason’s dad opposed to his son getting in fights feels a lot like Tien Feng’s scenes in Cub Tiger from Kwangtung, which Yuen helped choreograph. The whole bit about the syndicate is obviously taken from Game of Death. Like your typical late 70s kung fu comedy, the entire second act is devoted to our hero training, with the twist being that his teacher is Bruce Lee (as opposed to Sam Seed or Mr. Miyagi). Even some of the training sequences are lifted from Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and other Jackie Chan movies. When Jason Stilwell gets his ass handed to him by Dean Ramsey, the next scene shows a distraught Jason reflecting on the beating he just received, just like Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow. And like those films, the movie gives a sample fight to show off Jason’s newfound skills—he beats up some thugs who frequent his father’s bar—prior to the climax.
Peking Opera graduate Mang Hoi, billed here as “Harrison Mang,” was the principle action director[1]. Mang Hoi had been working with Seasonal Films for a decade by this point, going back to their early days when he would show up as an acrobatic little kid in Bruce Liang movies. By the late 1970s he had graduated to the rank of action director, working on kung fu classics like Death Duel of Kung Fu and Kung Fu vs. Yoga. He had recently worked with Corey Yuen on the latter’s directorial debut for Seasonal Films: Ninja in the Dragon’s Den. Mang directs the action with the same flair he would in films like Royal Warriors and Righting Wrongs. The fights follow sequences of blocks, punches and kicks that are less manic than its Hong Kong counterparts, but more complex and interesting than your typical Chuck Norris film of the same era.
Jean-Claude Van Damme comes close to stealing the show in his first major role as the sadistic Russian kickboxer Ivan. Prior to his getting casted here, he had been working as a bouncer at bar owned by Chuck Norris and had been on his Missing in Action stunt team. Before that, he had fought in both semi-contact karate and full-contact kickboxing circuits, with fight records of 44-4-0 and 18-1, respectively. He retired from the ring in 1982 and moved out to Hollywood to find his fortune in film.
His introduction, in which he steps off a colleage’s shoulder to perform a neat jump kick to Timothy Baker, is appropriately memorable. Later on, his patented jumping spin kick and infamous splits both get their showcases. Van Damme’s later films were notable for their static, “punching bag choreography.” It thus stands out that Van Damme engages in a more Hong Kong style of complex exchanges, which he seems rather good at. He should have used more Corey Yuen and less Frank Dux in his later films, judging from what we see here. Van Damme was still a bit new to all of this, and frequently struck his opponents for real. He knocked out Peter Cunningham twice and face-kicked Timothy Baker several times, despite being instructed to be careful. This came back to bite him in the ass years later when Jackson Pickney sued Van Damme for kicking his eye out on the set of Cyborg. Baker served as a witness for the plaintiff, although Ron Pohnel spoke out on Van Damme’s behalf.
Kurt McKinney was a tae kwon do expert and amateur kickboxing champion when he auditioned for the role. He was 22 at the time and had a young-looking face. Apparently, he showed up so late for the audition that the only role left to try out for was the lead, which was immediately given to him. McKinney impresses as Jason and channels a Drunken Master-era Jackie Chan: a good natured, if slightly arrogant, youngster who gets humbled and then learns martial arts in order to do the right thing. He gets to show off some nice kicks in his fights and is arguably more impressive than Van Damme, even if he lacks the latter’s screen presence. His consecutive spin kicks during the parking lot fight reminds me of Corey’s work on The Seven Grandmasters. It’s a shame that he wouldn’t get another real martial arts role for another decade, when he showed up in Cynthia Rothrock’s Sworn to Justice.
The
movie seemed to be a modest success, bringing in about 4 million dollars in the
box office. That was more than four times what Jackie Chan’s The Protector had made the year before,
so Seasonal Films was on reasonable ground to continue making films for the
western markets, which they would do up through 1997. No Retreat, No Surrender enjoys a strong cult following for its
solid martial arts sequences, its role in Van Damme’s filmography, and its 80s
kitsch factor: mullets, sleeveless shirts, synth soundtrack, people break
dancing while dressed up as fugitives from a Michael Jackson music video, and a
little bit of “USA! USA!” anti-Russian propaganda thrown in for good measure.
It is certainly in the running for the Eighties-est movie that ever Eighties'd.
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