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No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder
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| Year: |
1987
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Director: |
Corey Yuen
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| Stars: |
Loren Avedon, Max Thayer, Cynthia Rothrock, Patra Wanthivanond, Matthias Hues, Nirut Sirichanya, Lee Hwang Jang, Perm Hongsakul, Chesda Smithsuth, Grisapong Hanviriyakitichai, Roy Horan, Bunchai Im-arunrak, Opisok Praechaya, Sanchai Martves
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| Genre: |
Action, Martial Arts, Adventure |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Scott Wylde (Loren Avedon) is an American in Thailand, where he has arrived to meet his college girlfriend Sulin Nguyen (Patra Wanthivanond), seeking to take their relationship further. But he's also here to track down his old friend Mac Jarvis (Max Thayer), so goes into a gym to find out if anyone knows him there, whereupon he is coaxed into the kickboxing ring for a bout. Scott is an expert tae kwon do fighter, so makes quick work of his opponent, but one of the martial artists there, Terry (Cynthia Rothrock) remains unimpressed...
Mind you, as we discover over the course of the movie Terry is a hard woman to please, but she doesn't show up again for a while. This was the sequel to No Retreat, No Surrender - oh, wait, not really, because the stars of that one were otherwise engaged, though you can see where they would have fit into this, with the original hero replaced by a new student, Scott, and Jean-Claude Van Damme's evil Russian (with a Belgian accent) substituted for Matthias Hues' evil Russian (with a German accent), though again, he doesn't appear for a long stretch of storyline. Actually what this owed more to wasn't The Karate Kid as previously, but Rambo: First Blood Part 2.
Treating the whole of East Asia as essentially the same country, this time Scott Wylde has to use his combat skills to retrieve his kidnapped fiancée, as no sooner have he and Sulin dined on disgusting food at a local restaurant (which might be the source of the raging thunder of the title) than they are back at his seedy hotel room (he thought it was a five star establishment) and a bunch of tough guys have smashed in and kidnapped her. Scott does his best, but they get away leading him to seek out Mac, who is some kind of opportunist in the country but knows the ins and outs of living there, including the best way to get Sulin back. First, however, they have to deal with the authorities.
This is leading up to a raid by our heroes on a Khmer Rouge camp in Vietnam, or maybe the Vietcong in Cambodia, the geography is rather uncertain, but before they do that they must negotiate the jungles and rivers around it, which means more adventure for us viewers - and also the return of a character we've already met. Yes, Terry is a helicopter pilot too, of course she is, and she grumblingly takes Scott and Mac into a base there where there is an ambush and the chopper goes up in flames: quite a few things go boom here, especially in the latter stages. Although this was an American co-production, which explains the jingoism, with director Corey Yuen at the helm the Hong Kong aspects were notable too.
Which resulted in bags of senseless violence as countless extras are gunned down or blown up, for some the best reason to watch. Whether you took it seriously on the other hand was a different matter, it was blatantly ridiculous but you could understand why many approached it stony faced, as they did when Chuck Norris and the like were getting into the same shenanigans. For those with a more developed sense of the absurd, scenes such as where Scott and Mac are set upon by vegetarian Buddhist monks who tie them up and force them to do the splits simultaneously were somewhat hilarious, especially when it turns out these are actually evildoers posing as monks, a lot of trouble to go to you might have thought (the real holy men are tied up in a hut). The big showdown is so over the top it's actually highly entertaining, featuring as it does a pit full of crocodiles, the two actresses suspended over them Penelope Pitstop style, and Hues' bad guy getting his ass handed to him to prove American superiority. Music by David Spear.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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| Corey Yuen ( - )
Hong Kong director and actor. His earliest work was an uncredited director on the cheapo Bruce Lee sequel Tower of Death, but it was stylish, popular martial arts hits like Ninja in the Dragon Den, Yes Madam, Jackie Chan's Dragons Forever and the action fantasy Saviour of the Soul that made Yuen's name.
In the nineties, he directed Jet Li in films like The Legend, The Defender and The Enforcer, which led to work as action choreographer on many of Li's Hollywood films, including The One, Kiss of the Dragon and Cradle 2 the Grave. Most recently, Yuen directed the Luc Besson-produced action hit The Transporter. |
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