No Retreat No Surrender — Rebel Without A Cause with punches, a Korean Bruce Lee and JCVD

No Retreat No Surrender for a certain age group ranks among those films that made the early nineties as a kid magical. Watching the American Ninjas all five of them and trying to figure out what Kickboxer 2 was about (where did that third brother come from??) and swearing on all that was holy that Bruce Lee really caught a bullet with his teeth, someone's dad knew the real Rocky and if you danced like Van Damme in Kickboxer you could get any girl in school.

This was a time when the WWE was an instructional manual for all outdoor play.
Kurt McKineey was the James Dean for ten year olds of that time. He starts off rebellious and doesn’t really come into line, with the breaking into abandoned houses and seeing spirts. Daniel San he is not.
It’s the early nineties Rebel Without a Cause, from the emasculated Father to the Son’s desire to break away the chains of the previous generation. Of course the obvious Oedipus interpretation serves but it is much more interesting to see this as a metaphor for a life not lived free. A father who made the ‘safe’ choices and the need for the next generation to risk, to be truly alive. As Camus comments in The Rebel “Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.”
One of the essential of all great action of movies of this era is the training montage, if a movie didn’t have it, it usually sucked. This simple storytelling gimmick has spawned a generation obsessed with bio-hacking, work-hacking, life-hacking. It has made the psychic leap that mastering any skill is as simple as a training montage, Tim Ferriss most certainly watched many a training montage and ran outside feeling like the next Rocky Balboa.

The appearance of Bruce Lee (Kim Tai_Chung the Korean Bruce Lee) in the glow of spectral light brings to mind the Lacan’s mirror stage a striving towards the Ideal-I a struggle to become more than the perceived I. Once a seemingly impossible kick is completed the Ideal-I self of Bruce Lee returns to the light. But as Lacan has noted the striving for perfection may never stop.
Even though Jason saves the day, avenges his father and fights off Van Damme in a thinly disguised big business vs American heartland economic parable only here instead of legislation they utilize high kicks and hard punches.
Like Jason we may never achieve perfection but by striving we reveal the essence of what it is to be human.