Movie Description

No Retreat, No Surrender is a 1985 American martial arts film directed by Corey Yuen in his American directorial debut, and starring Kurt McKinney and Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film was released in the United States on May 2, 1986. The film is about the American teenager named Jason Stillwell (Kurt McKinney) who learns martial arts from the spirit of Bruce Lee. Stillwell uses these lessons to defend his martial arts dojo against the Russian martial artist Ivan Kraschinsky (Jean-Claude Van Damme).

No Retreat, No Surrender was written by Keith W. Strandberg after being contacted by the owner of Seasonal Film Corporation Ng See-yuen to write a script for them, despite having never written a script beforehand. Jean-Claude Van Damme was cast in the film and caused problems on the set for continually physically contacting other actors and stuntmen during the fight scenes even after director Corey Yuen told him not to.

In 1993, Black Belt placed No Retreat, No Surrender at seventh on their list of top ten choreographed martial arts films. The magazine specifically praised Jean-Claude Van Damme's jump kicks while noting that Kurt McKinney's look "suspiciously quick" noting that "unlike the Hong Kong movie industry, American filmmakers have yet to master the technique of speeding up the film without "jumpy/fidgety" side effects".