Karate tiger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Karate tiger
Original title No retreat, no surrender
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1986
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Corey Yuen
script See-Yuen Ng
Keith W. Strandberg
Corey Yuen
production See-Yuen Ng
music Paul Gilreath
camera David Golia
John Huneck
cut James Melkonian
Mark Pierce
Allan Poon
occupation

Karate Tiger is a youth and martial arts film from 1986 . It was directed by Corey Yuen and written by See-Yuen Ng , Keith W. Strandberg and Corey Yuen. Kurt McKinney played the main role . The later action star Jean-Claude Van Damme appeared in a supporting role .

action

The teenager Jason Stillwell is a student in Karate - Dojo his father Tom Stillwell in Los Angeles but his real passion is Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee , of which he is a great admirer. He often shows this during training sessions, which is why his father has to reprimand him every time. One evening after a training session, Tom receives a visit from a representative of a criminal organization in New York City , which had previously made him an offer to take over his dojo. Tom refuses this, because he knows that the organization wants to use the dojo for martial arts training for its members and that he does not want to join it. The representative is accompanied by two assistants, one of whom attacks Tom. He can fend off the first, but he has no chance against the second assistant, the Russian Ivan Kraschinsky. Tom breaks Tom's right leg, which makes Jason so angry that he in turn attacks Kraschinsky, who can easily deal with Jason. After his father prevents him from further attacks, Jason takes care of him. Tom is rushed to the hospital, where he makes a decision to renounce martial arts, close the dojo, and move away from Los Angeles.

The Stillwells then move to Seattle , the place where Bruce Lee was buried after his death. Jason sets up his exercise equipment in the garage of his new home. While clearing out he gets to know the breakdancer RJ Madison III., With whom he quickly becomes friends. But not everyone in the neighborhood is taken with Jason and his admiration for Bruce Lee, including the overweight Scott. He tries to trick RJ with nasty pranks, but RJ can always wriggle out of it, which makes Scott all the more angry. When Scott and his buddies surround RJ in front of a burger restaurant a little later, Jason RJ comes to the rescue and finally draws Scott's resentment and the frustration of his father, who would like to dissuade Jason from martial arts.

RJ introduces Jason to Seattle so far and drives him to the grave of Bruce Lee and the dojo of the newly crowned national karate champion Ian Reilly, with whose sister Kelly Jason is now in a relationship. Jason is greeted by Ian's assistant Dean Ramsay. What Jason does not know, Scott is also registered in the dōjō, who, in revenge, lies to Dean that Jason beat him up for no reason because Los Angeles karate is better than Seattle karate. Dean believes him and decides to teach Jason a lesson with the help of graduate student Frank Peters. When Jason joins the training group, he notices too late that a trap has been set for him and is put into the mangle by Frank until RJ intervenes and escapes from the dojo with Jason.

A little later, both Jason and the group from the dojo are invited to Kelly's birthday party. Scott can watch Jason and Kelly kiss, which makes Dean jealous, who is also in love with Kelly. So it happens that the group continues to provoke Jason. He tries not to let himself be disturbed, but can no longer bear the ongoing provocations, so that he attacks Dean and is devastatingly beaten. Humiliated, he leaves the party and leaves Kelly himself. In desperation, Jason visits Bruce Lee's grave, where he asks his idol for help and advice. But at home, the next conflict with his father is already waiting, which leads to an argument that makes Tom so angry that he destroys the training equipment and Jason's poster of Bruce Lee. Jason runs away in despair and asks RJ for help. Since RJ's father is a real estate agent, he knows of an empty building, which Jason is setting up as a new training facility and retreat. He falls asleep exhausted.

That same night, the ghost of Bruce Lee appears to Jason, who agrees to take Jason under his wing. The prerequisite for this is that Jason never misuses what he has learned for attack or revenge, which Jason has no interest in either, he just wants to learn Lee's way. But the start turns out to be difficult, because Jason first has to forget everything he has learned before and is physically tempered for this training. On the following nights, the spirit of Bruce Lee instructs Jason into the depths of Jeet Kune Do. This draws the attention of RJ to both of them, who cannot see the spirit. He basically only sees Jason seemingly talking to himself and being thrown across the room. Nonetheless, RJ supports Jason with training. One evening Lee gives Jason the task of hitting a sandbag with one leg from a standing position, pulling the bag higher than Jason's height. Jason doubts it will succeed, but Lee only says that Jason will fail if he wants to. But if he sees success in his mind's eye and firmly believes in it, then success will come too. In fact, Jason manages to kick the sandbag, with which Lee sees his task as completed and returns to the afterlife. Jason is sad that his teacher is gone again, but he is also motivated to always pay attention to the path and to walk with discipline. He then continues to train hard to perfect his skills.

His father, who now works as a bartender, has his own problems with a bat. This continues to provoke him until Tom throws him out of the bar. The thug swears revenge and calls a few buddies together who ambush Tom a little later and attack. Due to the injury, he has a hard time with the clubs until Jason comes to the rescue and can drive the clubs away with his new skills. Tom and Jason reconcile, and Tom realizes how foolish he was to renounce martial arts, but Jason encourages him. Things also get better when it comes to love when RJ and Jason visit a discotheque where Kelly is also present. After initial difficulties, RJ succeeds in bringing the two back together with the help of two breakdance buddies, which also reconciles.

At the same time, her brother Ian receives a visit from the same representative of the criminal organization who previously pushed Tom out of business. Here, too, a takeover offer was made, which Ian naturally rejects. To make things more exciting, the rep asked Ian to do a series of competitions in a local gym, which Ian accepted. The event is widely advertised and the hall is full. The competition stipulates that there will be a series of fights in best of three mode, where three fighters from Ian's dojo, consisting of Dean, Frank and Ian himself against three fighters from New York. Before the start of the first fight, however, the representative from New York grabs the microphone and announces a change in his team. He replaces the entire team with Ivan Kraschinsky. Jason and Tom recognize him, which prompts Jason to warn Ian about Kraschinsky, but he is not taken seriously.

Dean is the first to play against Kraschinsky. However, he is promoted from the ring in the first round and thus loses. Frank also has no chance and New York would have actually won. Since the agent wants to increase the tension, he announces that the fight between Kraschinsky and Ian should be the fight in which the winner gets everything. Ian can hold his own against Kraschinky and at least make it into the second round. There, however, Kraschinky becomes more and more aggressive and cares less and less about the rules, which leads to the fact that he even throws the referee out of the ring and increasingly shows unfair actions against Ian. Scott and Kelly try to intervene in the fight and help Ian, but when Kraschinsky pulls Kelly by the hair, Jason does not keep it on the field and intervenes in the fight and takes over for Ian. Kraschinsky recognizes Jason and the two fight a bitter fight, in which Jason's new abilities come into their own. Kraschinsky continues to try to unfairly win the fight, but RJ never encourages Jason to back down or give up. With that, Jason can finally turn the tide in his favor. He defeats Kraschinsky, forcing the criminal organization to withdraw and is frenetically celebrated by the audience and his friends for his victory.

criticism

The lexicon of international films judged the film to be "a stupid and naive action mix."

Soundtrack

A soundtrack (composed by Paul Gilreath) was released for the release of the film in 1986. This caused a lot of confusion, however, because the music of the individual versions of the film differed continentally. In the American film version, different music was heard than z. B. in Europe. The song “Hold on to the Vision” by US singer Kevin Chalfant is missing from the soundtrack. This song was never released on a phonogram in Germany. At the beginning of November 2008 the complete original soundtrack by the composer Frank Harris was released as an mp3 download. “Hold on to the Vision” is available in four different versions. In addition to the original version from 1985, there are two remix versions from 1987 and 2008, as well as an instrumental version of the 1985 original version.

Sequels

Several other films were released in German-speaking countries under the name "Karate Tiger".

In fact, these are mostly not really sequels - other films that have been released here under the title "Karate Tiger" are often either individual films with no connection to the original or come from completely different film series. To make this clear, the films are listed here with their original titles and their sequels - the respective German titles are in brackets. Then only the films that belong to the Karate Tiger series in Germany are listed below in numerical order with their German titles. Some films were released under more than two different titles, all name variations are not discussed here.

  • Part 1: No Retreat, No Surrender 1 (German title: Karate Tiger → Subject of this article)
  • Part 2: No Retreat, No Surrender 2 (German title: Karate Tiger 2 )
- Continuation: No Retreat, No Surrender 3 (German title: Kick-Boxer 2 - Blood Brothers )
- Continuation: No Retreat, No Surrender 4 (German title: Karate Tiger 5 - King of Kickboxers )
- Continuation: No Retreat, No Surrender 5 (German title: American Shaolin )
- Continuation: Kickboxer 2 (German title: Kickboxer 2 - The champ returns )
- Continuation: Kickboxer 3 (German title: Karate Tiger 6 - decision in Rio )
- Continuation: Kickboxer 4 (German title: Kickboxer 4 - The Aggressor )
- Continuation: Kickboxer 5 (German title: Kickboxer 5 - Redemption )
- Continuation: Best of the Best 2 (German title: Best of the Best 2 - The Invincible )
- Continuation: Best of the Best 3 (German title: Best of the Best 3 - No Turning Back )
- Continuation: Best of the Best 4 (German title: Kick Fire - Without any warning )

The various films or film series ( No Retreat, No Surrender , Kickboxer , Best of the Best , To Be the Best etc.) were imported from the USA by the German video distributors at their discretion and given the title Karate Tiger . So it happened that the titles did not correspond numerically with the (original) chronological appearance of the films in the USA.

This makes it clear that - depending on how you look at it - you can see two series of films as a sequel to Karate Tiger (1) (in the original: No Retreat, No Surrender ). On the one hand, the films, which are originally sequels to No Retreat, No Surrender (Karate Tiger 1), although these have just as little to do with each other as the films that run under the title Karate Tiger in German , on the other hand, you can see the films that are called Karate Tiger in German as sequels, although in the original they are parts of completely independent film series or completely independent individual films .

The title Karate Tiger was also used for the film American Karate Tiger (OT: Showdown ). It was directed by Robert Radler, who already shot Karate Tiger 4 ( Best of the Best ).

Others

  • Van Damme slightly injured Jason's film father Timothy Baker in the leg and face while shooting the opening scene. He later accused him of not having his technique under control.
  • Kent Lipham , who played fat Scott (who RJ called " Baby Elephant"), passed away on September 25, 2008 at the age of only 46.
  • Tae-jeong Kim, who played Bruce Lee, died on August 27, 2011 at the age of 54.
  • The film grossed approximately $ 4.7 million at the American box office.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karate Tiger. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Kent Lipham in the IMDb
  3. ↑ Tae-jeong Kim in the IMDb
  4. ↑ Karate Tiger in the IMDb