No Retreat, No Surrender

After living in Taiwan for a year in the early 1980s, screenwriter Keith W. Strandberg became interested in working in martial arts films as an actor. He moved back to the United States and became a tour director in China, from where he continued to visit Hong Kong to make contact with producers and screenwriters. After being turned down by several studios, including Shaw Brothers, Strandberg read about Seasonal Film Corporation and got in contact with the studio head, Ng See-yuen. Ng expressed an interest in making an American film and asked if Strandberg knew anything about screenplays; Strandberg lied that he did. A year later, Ng contacted Strandberg in America, stating that he wanted to write a script for them. Strandberg wrote a draft of what would become No Retreat, No Surrender. While production began on the film, Strandberg was on set and spent hours every night changing the script to improve its quality while filming.[6]

Jean-Claude Van Damme was cast as the Soviet villain, Ivan Kraschinsky. On set, he performed a roundhouse kick on Pete Cunningham, rendering him unconscious.[6] Actor and martial artist Timothy Baker stated that during action scenes on the set, the production manager and director Corey Yuen instructed Van Damme to not make contact with the other actors and stuntmen.[7][8] Despite repeated warnings, Van Damme continued to do so, performing kicks on Baker during filming. Other actors and martial artists claimed that Van Damme had not been reckless with his physical contact, including Ron Pohnel, who said, "His control wasn't such as mine, but I had no complaints".[7] Van Damme originally had a two-picture deal with Strandberg but broke his contract.[6]

While there was never a DVD release in the United States,[9] a Blu-ray edition of the film was published by Kino Lorber Classics in Region A, on February 21, 2017, which contained both the American theatrical release and a longer international cut.[10]

No Retreat, No Surrender was released on May 2, 1986.[11] It was the eleventh-highest grossing film on its opening week at the American box office, earning $739,723;[12] it grossed a total of $4,662,137 in the United States and Canada.[13]

The film sold 1.3 million tickets in the United States[14] and 395,013 in France.[15]

Walter Goodman of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, writing that the story appeared to have been "slapped-together".[16] Time Out compared it to The Last Dragon, Karate Kid, and Rocky IV, noting that it "borrows heavily" from those films and "makes them look like masterpieces".[17] Martial arts magazine Black Belt gave the film a rating of one-and-a-half out of five, noting that Jean-Claude Van Damme does not have much screen time and that the film was derivative of The Karate Kid.[18] Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times called it "hilariously bad" and an "amateurish clunker" with poor action scenes.[19]

In 1993, Black Belt placed the film at seventh on their list of top-ten choreographed martial arts films. The magazine specifically praised Van Damme's jump kicks, while noting that McKinney's look "suspiciously quick", mentioning 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".[20] In 2017, Ed Travis of Cinapse said the film "manages to never the less [sic] entertain and delight with a combination of pure earnestness and legitimately cool fight work".[21] Austin Trunick of Under the Radar said Van Damme's scenes "are prime Van Damme, at least, with some fantastic fight choreography and a full showcase of splits, high-kicks, and bug-eyed snarling".[22]

The film was riffed live at a number of venues on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live: The Great Cheesy Movie Tour, by Joel Hodgson, in 2019.[23][24] It was also riffed by RiffTrax on October 15, 2015.[25]