No Retreat, No Surrender (1986) Reviews

It starts off like the Karate Kid. The guy goes to a new city and gets in trouble with a local bully. The bully is reletively weak, but he gets his martail arts friends to pick on the new guy too. He can't fight back, because his father is very adament about fighting. If he does fight back, he'll just get his rear end kicked by the much better advanced blackbelts. So what does he do, well this is a karate film, and he is in Seattle. He asks the grave of the legendary master Bruce Lee for help. And sure enough, Bruce trains him in spectral form. If you can get thru the cheesy story line, which plagues every martial arts movie, than you get to see some good fighting. Van Damme is a very good villain and takes out the best of the martial arts dojo in a highly competitive team vs Van Damme competition. Just when it looks like the croonies and there muscle, Van Damme, have successfully strong armed another dojo under their belt, Bruce Lee's new prodigy show up.
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This movie is pretty much like The Karate Kid, but for some reason, it looks older even though, it was supposedly made 2 years after. I think is is brilliant because of the ingenius idea of having the spirit of the greatest martial artist ever, to come to the rescue of an individual and train him from the beyond. The acting is ok and the fight scenes are cool, the training montage is funny and this is the first movie Van Damme made here in the USA, fun to watch and the ending is excellent. I've tried to find this movie, but can't get it anywhere!!
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