Karaté Tiger 2

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.

This sequel has nothing to do with the original film, but is connected that American kickboxers fight Soviet killing machines. This marked the debuts of Loren Avedon and Matthias Hues. The only flaw in the film was the short fight between Cynthia Rothrock and Hwang Jang-lee. If this was longer and Hwang didn't have any padding, the fight would've been spectacular. The finale between Avedon and Hues is blistering, especially when Avedon unleashes his awesome kicking. Pretty good for martial arts fans to enjoy!!!

No Retreat, No Surrender was a film about a dude who was having trouble fitting in at his new home after his dad got injured by the mob. He learns kungfu from the ghost of Bruce Lee and tackles a Russian martial arts champ at a tournament. The only thing this one has in common with that is a Russian being the big bad at the end. Oh, this one has Max Thayer too; granted, I do not remember him in the first film. This one has Cynthia Rothrock so point to this film! Granted, she kind of feels like a last minute add in...

So the story has a guy visiting an Asian country, at first seemingly to find an old chum (Thayer), but after running afoul of Cynthia he apparently has a fiance. She gets kidnapped so the guy finally finds his buddy and they make plans to rescue her. She has been kidnapped by a dude in a Russian camp. He is pretty tough, he obliterated Cynthia, but he kind of fought her unfair. Cynthia joins the heroes as a helicopter pilot and if she had a better fate I would have given this one a higher score.

The cast is good, as I have never seen the lead but he was pretty good; however, both Rothrock and Thayer are the two more charismatic leads. The lead Russian bad guy is good too, probably most known for his role as the killer alien in the Dolph film, I Come In Peace.

So it was enjoyable for what must of been a low budget action film. Plays more like a Rambo film during the ending scenes than anything found in the first film. Not sure why they tried to tie this one with that one, I guess they felt they needed a hook?

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!

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.