No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder

No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder (1989) was a sequel only in name to the first film. Corey Yuen is back, Seasonal Films decided to make another film to the series. This time the movie's featured star is Cynthia Rothrock. The action is also co-directed by Hoi Meng.

The movie takes place in Southeast Asia. A couple of commandos along with a female agent are sent on a deep cover assignment. Their mission is to take out a suspected Soviet clandestine operation. Whilst in Thailand they discover that their mission has become a whole lot more complicated than they could have ever imagined.

The acting is not that great but it's adequate. Who's kidding themselves. Who goes to a movie like this and expect a cast full of thespians. The action set pieces are what we expect from the team of Hoi Meng and Corey Yuen, bone breaking action with a fair amount of blood letting. Cynthia Rothtock is phenomenal in her role. More action and less gabbing from her.

If you like no nonsense action films then this one's for you. Others need not apply because you'll be turned away from the nonsensical plot and pedestrian acting. But the action scenes are excellent and fun to watch.

A Beat 'Em Up and Shoot 'Em Up all wrapped up into one high octane package of pure brilliance. The plot is shady, the acting is iffy and the music is cheesy but still this flick packs a punch. The opening scene post credits pits Terry (Cynthia Rothrock) and Scott Wylde (Loren Avedon) a Tae-Kwon-Do expert in a war of words and showboating. With bad edited dialogue, poor acting (both improve as the film progresses) and over-the-top martial arts, we discover that Scott with his poorly delivered one-liners is on his travels to Bangkok and he is looking for an old friend, Mac Jarvis (Max Thayer) for some reason. Soon we are catapulted into the thick of it, Scott's fiance Sulin Nguyen (Patra Wanthivanond) is kidnapped from a hotel in Thailand by Soviet trained Vietnamese military operating out of Cambodia. Not only this but Scott is framed for the murder of his girlfriends entire family, so the plot thickens or gets muddled or something along those lines. Enter Mac, weapons expert and the man full of cheese, Mac is the man you need to know who can get you anything you need to save your fiance from a military base on top of a mountain, especially if it is manned by Soviet trained Vietnamese soldiers. Soon Scott, along with Mac and Terry, who comes back into the fold are on a mission into Cambodia to save Sulin. We then get the pleasantry of been introduced to the villain Yuri (Matthias Hues) the Russian commander, with his French-German accent and super soldier abilities not far removed from M.Bison in Street Fighter 2, who's weakness is apparently a picture frame. Along this journey we are gifted with pretty good choreographed fight scenes (some over the top, some pure cheese but all entertaining) and great shoot 'em up action, ending with a great finale. Mac "She's gone Scott." Scott "Lets get the hell out of here, alright." This film doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't, it's pure fun action, that keeps the hits flowing.

A cheesy moment to savour: A grenade is rolled, a villain is turned over onto the grenade and a table placed on top of him.

This was originally intended to be a direct sequel to the first 'NR, NS' which launched the career of a certain Jean Claude Van Damme. However Van Damme pulled out feeling the film would not have furthered his career while persuading co-star Kurt McKinney to do the same. As a result, the story was changed with Tae Kwon Do expert Loren Avedon and Matthias Hues drafted in to play the American and Russian stereotypes.

The basic synopsis sees Avedon's character call in some friends in an attempt to rescue his Thai girlfriend, while strangely coming across a contingent of the Russian army (camped out in the Vietnamese jungle!) in the process, as well as a group of fake Shaolin monks. (Blame Keith W. Strandberg for the script!).

Surprisingly, for an American film, there are some well executed and imaginative fight sequences predominantly showcasing the excellent kicking skills of Avedon. This is clearly the influence of Yuen Kwai who was not prepared to concede too much to the American filming and time constraints. The finale, while inferior to the first films final reel, features Cynthia Rothrock as a hard-hitting, tough talking helicopter pilot (not a cop/CIA/FBI agent for a change!) showing some of the moves which made her name on the Jade screen. This movie is one of the only 80's flicks that uses her real voice! Loren Avedon did not follow Jean Claude's example and stayed on after this film fulfilling his 3 picture contract, notably with the decent third instalment of the NR, NS series: 'Blood Brothers' with the excellent Keith Vitali (Yuen Biao's opponent in 'Wheels on Meals') and I am surprised he was never used in a 'real' Hong Kong picture as he is clearly skilled and quick enough to have made a good screen villain.

To me this is one of the best movie of its type. The chief reason being the interesting mixture of characters in this movie, and they're all good.

Of course this movie stars Loren Avedon, and Cynthia Rothrock, both of whom were at their early stages of their career, but they look fresh, and good. Even better than many of their later works, so the director of this movie must have been really good.

Each scenes has attention to details, and they have the clean looks to them that makes it easy on the eyes.

Story is pretty good too, perfectly matched to each of the characters.

This definitely is one of the best movie Loren Avedon, and Cynthia Rothrock has starred in. It's bit juvenile for me now, but when it came out, I was much younger, and it looked perfect to me at the time.

Despite being a sequel, this has nothing to do with the first movie. There's a whole new cast, and a brand new plot. A quite good one, actually. No Retreat, No Surrender 2 is the perfect example of pure 80's fun. It has lots of really cool fighting, fun background music and almost everything else we all know as bad (but really entertaining) 80's action stuff. The last fifteen minutes of the movie are excellent. Movies with totally evil Soviet military bases are always fun! And Matthias Hues is perfect as an evil Soviet military. The last fight between him and Loren Avedon must be considered as a classic.

Same score as the first movie: 7 out of 10!