No Retreat No Surrender

No Retreat No Surrender – 1986, Corey Yeun

After watching JCVD I decided to go back and see how many of Jean-Claude’s films I could stomach, so I started at the beginning with ‘No Retreat No Surrender’.

NRNS is a JCVD film in so much as ‘Executive Decision’ is a Steven Segal film.
Jean-Claude’s character doesn’t die after 15 minutes, but he is only in the film for a total of 20 minutes or so, mainly at the end as the Big Bad Guy that the young hero has to take on.

NRNS has a cult following as one of those ‘so bad it’s good’ films due to the low budget and incredibly bad acting by every actor without exception. The story goes that Corey Yeun saw The Karate Kid and decided that he could do better, so he went over to America from Hong Kong and gave it a go.

Even though he was in America with English speaking actors making an American film, Yeun and his Hong Kong production team made a Hong Kong film, complete with the horrendous overacting associated with it. If you watch films like ‘Fist of Fury’ or ‘The Young Master’, or any Hong Kong kung-fu flick from the Bruce Lee/Jacky Chan period, all of the actors ham it up and over-emphases like crazy. But because you’re watching Chinese actors, and particularly if you’re watching a non-dubbed version, it’s not intolerable, in fact it seems normal. It was how (action) films were made in Hong Kong at the time.

Corey Yeun was just doing what he had always done, perhaps to the bewilderment of the cast. The story is bonkers and plays out like a spoof of eighties films in the same way that ‘Totally Awesome’ does, only of course it is played completely straight.

I wouldn’t suggest you add No Retreat No Surrender to your Love Film list, but if it happens to be on TV one night, you could do worse.

Not sure if I’ll get far beyond Bloodsport.