No Retreat, No Surrender 3: Blood Brothers Reviews

NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER 3 - BLOOD BROTHERS is a thoroughly conventional, if barely up to snuff, actioner. Two estranged sons, younger misfit Will (Loren Avedon) and older brother Casey (Keith Vitali), set out to avenge the murder of their retired CIA operative father, John Alexander (Joseph Campanella), by silver-haired hulk terrorist Franco (Rion Hunter) and his deadly cronies. Although warned against it by Alexander's CIA replacement Atteron (Luke Askew) and mentor MacPherson (Philip Benson), Will, who teaches martial arts in a dojo, travels to Gold Coast, Florida, and infiltrates Franco's organization via underworld flunky Angel (David Michael Sterling). Casey, a crackerjack CIA agent, follows separately and tracks down Franco with the help of his ex-girlfriend Maria (Wanda Acuna). Will and Casey ultimately join forces to foil Franco's current plot, to kidnap the Mozambique ambassador at Tampa airport, a subterfuge for assassinating the US President, who is coincidentally arriving at the same airport at the same time. After taking on Franco in fierce martial arts showdown, the two siblings discover that the traitorous Atterton, gunned down by Maria, has been directing Franco's activities all along. The presence of B-movie stalwarts Joseph Campanella and Luke Askew, the latter concealed behind sunglasses as if to disguise his participation, fails to enliven this often incoherently plotted and technically scrawny movie. While Avedon, who starred in NO RETURN, NO SURRENDER II, is adequate, Vitali and Acuna are perfectly awful actors; in this respect, as the film's sole love interests, they truly deserve each other. Hunter makes a suitably ferocious villain, who's working for "the cause" in a revolution that is never specified. Director Lucas Lo serves up sufficient gory action, martial arts, gunplay and a couple of lively torture scenes as well, much of it very well staged, although the climactic showdown features a bewigged stuntman a full head shorter than Hunter. NO RETURN, NO SURRENDER 3's somewhat better predecessors are the original, which launched the career of action star Jean-Claude van Damme, and its sequel, a post-Vietnam jungle adventure. Although all three films were produced Ng See Yuen, written by Keith Strandberg and edited by Alan Poon, they don't share any story or character similarities whatsoever. (Violence, profanity.)