1987
Cast: Loren Avedon, Mattias Hues, Max Thayer, Cynthia Rothrock, Hwang Jang-Lee
Genre: Action Martial Arts
Plot: A martial artist, his arms merchant buddy and their pilot stage a rescue in Indochina
Part 2 bears no resemblance to the events of the previous No Retreat, No Surrender as none of the characters from the first film return. The Thai-based production plot follows a character named Scott who arrives in Southeast Asia and sees that his girlfriend gets kidnapped, just as they were about to spend the night together in a swanky hotel; with the help of his pal, Mac, female Terry, the trio head off to Cambodia and to battle it out with some Russian bad guys.
No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder was originally intended to be the direct sequel to 1986's No Retreat No Surrender, but Jean-Claude Van Damme pulled out feeling that the vehicle would not have propelled him onto latter success, with costar, Kurt McKinney following suit afterwards. Because of that, the story and characters were changed with Loren Avedon and Mattias Hues drafted in as replacements, with the hulking German Hues playing a Russian; Raging Thunder also acts as Avedon's main billing on a movie.
Unlike the Kickboxer series of films, the No Retreat, No Surrender streak commences with an okay film, bland second film and a very good third movie with each instalment, action-wise; beginning with the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, the combined films are more competent, enjoyable in contrast to the former. The acting as ever is corny in places, the story is far less entertaining and probably the biggest sin Raging Thunder commits is to have one of the biggest female martial arts movie stars Cynthia Rothrock killed off towards the end. Yes, Cynthia fights, but not as often as one expects, which is disappointing.
No Retreat, No Surrender 2 is 90% war movie, 10% martial arts actioner and with a run time of almost 1hr 45 mins, the story is so padded and yet most of it is drone-worthy stuff. The film would have been better if it had ditched the war setting, stale story and opted for a more contemporary straight forward action martial arts approach.
Final Verdict:
Three years on, the third movie did everything right and better than this second instalment, and whilst Avedon can be decent as an actor with an okay script, fights-wise, he shows how agile and skilful he is, yet it is unfortunate that the action comes in very short bursts.
The fight between Avedon (with the aid of a stunt double) and Mattias Hue was the highlight, but besides that, No Retreat, No Surrender 1 and 2 are easily skippable and with that, I'd stick with the third outing.
Overall:
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