No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers (1990)

A Masterpiece!

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This is a decent little martial arts flick very much in the Hong Kong mould – although it's an American movie, there's a lot of Chinese talent behind the scenes which means that the varied fight scenes are identical to the ones you'll find coming out of Hong Kong during the same period. The film this directly reminded me of was Yuen Biao's ABOVE THE LAW, for example. It's the third in a series of films that seem to get slightly better as they go along. The first was a fun take on the KARATE KID story, the second used a Rambo-era Vietnam backdrop for the action, and this one is just a stand alone action flick.The first thing I noticed was that the acting is absolutely diabolical – the worst of the series, and among the worst I've seen even in this genre. Keith Vitali is a more than able fighter but his attempts at emoting are frankly atrocious – and it's little wonder that he didn't go on to star in much after this. Loren Avedon, returning from the last film, is better, but not on the level of a Van Damme or Seagal in their heyday. Not that it matters much – the supporting cast are bad enough to make Vitali and Avedon look good on occasion, with the exception of Rion Hunter, the weird-looking bad guy who plays this thing down to a tee. Wanda Acuna, in comparison, the Puerto Rican love interest, is awful.But anyway – who watches these flicks for the acting? I certainly don't – it's all about the action, and that's where NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER 3: BLOOD BROTHERS triumphs. The fight scenes come thick and fast and are expertly choreographed to best show off the genuine skills of the participants. They can be funny (Avedon pretending to kill his brother) and they can be violent (the last, extended bout which doesn't disappoint at all) but the key thing is that they're all good – even the brief ones. They're also packed with stunts, from the usual 'guys smashing through windows' stuff to that effect I love, where somebody is kicked and spin around and around, incredibly fast, in the air before hitting the ground. Weapon play, shoot-outs, and the classic two-versus-one climax – I loved every bit of it.Okay, so the story is pretty weak when it comes down to it, although the opening murder of the father was sufficiently violent to have me shocked and rooting for the good guys to kick some backside. The film meanders in places, and comes across as very dated in terms of the fashions, the haircuts, and the mannerisms, but hey, it was still the '80s when they filmed it. BLOOD BROTHERS is nothing more than a popcorn action flick and works very well for what it is.

I'm going to write a short review, as this title does not worth more than few lines...The plot is simply primitive. I can't be more positive about it. Though the close combat fights are choreographed pretty well, the whole movie is a joke. The directing is so bad that it hurts me.Just an example: in the final scene, when the terrorists are trying to take down the president the Alexander brothers come to save the day. Casey has a broken wrist and his wrist is in a plaster. This fact does not set him back to fight and use that wounded fist. While his young brother, Will got a shot into his shoulder and then Will is fighting with a wide smile on his face with his shot shoulder... Even Will is hanging on at the back of the escaping car with his overshot arm/shoulder.In another scene at the hangar, where Casey and his girlfriend was kept as prisoners, the terrorists were shooting at them from 5-10 meters distance with automatic guns/UZIs. Of course, no bullets reached the main actor...These were only 2 ridiculous scenes from the movie. The whole movie is full of this kind of badly directed scenes.I'm deeply sorry to say it, after watching the No Retreat, No Surrender 2, but this follow-up was the worst I have seen so far. (I'm 26 at the time, when writing this review.)The only reason why I gave this title 2 out of 10 is the fact that Loren Avedon is funny and incredibly cool when fighting and the fighting scenes are good and entertaining.

The most insane martial arts film from America incorporates an albino terrorist leader's plot to kill president George WH Bush. In classical Hong Kong style, Blood Brothers bares no connection to previous NRNS-series instalments, apart from sheer wackiness, creative dance-like use of violence and a tacked-on cold-war nationalism verging on parody. One of the great screen fighters, Loren Avedon, was brought into the series to replace Kurt McKiney, who broke his contract to return in the sequels. But these mishaps didn't stop the strange phenomena of this movie series getting better with every sequel. Seasonal film's Hong Kong production on American soil brought truly daring and dangerous fight sequences to VHS. The other "blood brother" and truly joyous cinematic ham Keith Vitali, had a plaster-cast on his arm for the first few scenes because he genuinely broke it during filming. Scenery is chewed and successfully digested by bleached blond and English-accented Rion Hunter as the leader of a strange gang of king-fu fighting communist terrorists. This all leads to the assassination plot of George Bush senior, incorporating real footage of the president, which along with strange moments of text used on a blank screen, constitutes the most unlikely tribute to Jean-Luc Godard in cinema. Cheesy quotable dialogue and severe bone-crunching where it counts, NRNS 3: Blood Brothers is among the very cream of B-cinema and wildly enjoyable.

Wow. Just wow. This film and its video cover easily have the greatest tagline of any film, in the greatest series of movies ever. Putting this film into words does not do it justice. Loren Avedon is one of the most amazing action heroes of all time. The fact that his career during its success period only featured 3 amazing and mesmerizing movies, it's like he was Bruce Lee, in the way that he was so amazing for such a short period of time and he gave the art away. See it, but see it as a film enthusiast, starting from hiring it at the video store after studying and looking over the video cover, then come home and put it in the vcr on a summer evening. You will have an experience that only the most fortunate people on earth experience.