*SPOILERS
AHEAD*

Corey Yuen’s 1986 cult masterpiece No
Retreat, No Surrender had a lasting influence on western martial arts
movies. Not only did it give us Jean-Claude Van Damme, but it raised the bar
for fight choreography and provided us a taste of the Hong Kong style prior to the action
revolution of the late 90s. In some cases the influence was even greater than
that, as a couple filmmakers produced movies that for all the world appear to be NRNS’s spiritual successors. One
of these – Breathing Fire – seems
like a genuine attempt to replicate the unique recipe of American and Hong Kong
flavors, complete with odd writing, an upbeat tone, and superior action
scenes. This one’s a karate treasure – not great at
storytelling but utterly successful in holding a viewer’s attention.

TRIVIA: Breathing Fire and No
Retreat, No Surrender and indeed related, though only through personnel. Director
Brandon Pender is credited for “kick boxing direction” in NRNS, and producer Wayne Yee played a bit part in it.

The film opens with a surreal scene of antagonist Michael Moore (Jerry Trimble) siting at a table bedecked with artificial food. It’s completely
unexplained – possibly a dream sequence – but it
introduces us to one of the film’s most prominent themes: deception and false
fronts. The next scene is of Michael driving his two
teenage sons to a martial arts tournament; he seems
like a perfectly normal father, but right after dropping
the boys off, he leads a bank robbery wherein his
squad steals a fortune in gold bars. They stow these in the vault of an
abandoned metal refinery until they can be sold, and Michael comes up with a unique way of keeping everyone honest. He creates
a mold of the vault’s keys in a plastic pizza, then destroys the originals and
divides the pizza among his people. Mutual cooperation will be necessary to
recast the keys.

Michael’s gang is made up of the deceptive Jenny (Jacqueline Pulliam),
karate master Alan (Allen Tackett), the mighty Tank (Wendell C. Whitaker), and
the muscleman Thunder (Bolo Yeung). They’re the ones who actually rob the bank,
but another person who’s also in on the scheme is Peter Stern (Drake Diamond), an
employee who has second thoughts about the operation after the
sadistic Thunder shoves his face into a toilet. He tries to
get out of the deal, but the paranoid Michael follows him home and
murders him and his wife (Jackie O’Brien). They search for his slice of the pizza,
but Peter had already sent his teenage daughter Annie (Laura Hamilton) to mail it to a confidant. Annie witnesses the murder from afar and flees with her
puppy, heading for the address on the envelope. However, the villains
acquire the same lead from a trashed envelope.

Annie shows up at an auto garage and meets the addressee: David Moore (Ed Neil),
Michael’s brother. Shortly after Annie gives him the envelope and asks for
help, Alan and a couple thugs arrive to kidnap her. David is knocked around a
bit, but eventually reveals himself as a kung fu master and drives
the attackers away. He goes with Annie to what he believes is a safe haven –
Michael’s luxurious home. The danger is immediately apparent to us: though neither is at liberty
to reveal anything, Michael knows who Annie is while Annie recognizes him from before. Neither is able to do anything directly: Annie doesn’t dare
leave David’s vicinity and Michael can’t act while others are around – “others”
meaning David and his sons Charlie (Jonathan Ke Quan) and Tony (Eddie
Saavedra).

In addition to being the stars of the movie, Charlie and Tony are also my
favorite things about it. Quan and Saavedra aren’t master thespians, but they
have a lovable, dorky enthusiasm and excellent chemistry. Charlie is a
Vietnamese adoptee but the comradery
between his stepbrother and he is natural and heartfelt. Charlie doesn’t seem
as close with his father, though our only real hint of this for now is a moment
when he feels excluded from introductions with David. Nevertheless, the boys
take an immediate liking to Annie, and though they try to impress her, their
relationship ends up being pretty innocent as they try to keep her mind off her
troubles. The brothers know nothing about their father’s involvement in crime
and suspect nothing when Michael’s thugs show up to take Annie. Having
previously qualified for a national martial arts competition, the boys can hold
their own against these guys, but it takes the intervening David to beat back the attackers.

The boys take their roles as protectors seriously, and implore David to teach them
his style of fighting. However, they fail their very first test – an exercise wherein
they kneel on upturned bricks. Worse, David’s ability to protect the kids
himself is dashed after the boys and he trace their attackers to a dance club
owned by Alan. Michael is at the club, too, and shows an increased
level of ruthlessness by attacking his brother in the near-dark and injuring his
leg.

TRIVIA: Prior to acting, Jerry Trimble
was a professional kickboxer and 2-time world champion. Ironically, Trimble originally aspired to be an actor and learned martial arts to emulate Bruce Lee.

At the hospital, a doctor claims that David will never be whole again. David
doesn’t take his new disability well and hides himself away. When the boys visit, he lashes out at them. Eventually, they manage to rekindle his spirits and
earn his instructorship by kneeling on bricks all night. David commences their training, and in doing so realizes that his disability won’t keep him from exercising his
passion. It also illustrates another prominent theme: dealing with trauma. In addition to David’s and Annie’s traumatic experiences, the film
also indicates that Michael was adversely affected by his service in Vietnam.
Annie seems to take her ordeal unrealistically well, but note that the presence
of her new friends and her dog seems to provide outlets for
coping. Faced with the prospect of never fighting again, David channels
his frustrations into training the boys and making them stronger than he
was. Michael may have buried his trauma and embraced a secret lifestyle wherein
he can act out his aggression. In the near future, his
sons will be forced to confront trauma as well.

The boys commence a fairly unorthodox training regimen that
includes punching phonebooks, kneeling on beer bottles, mastering the tai chi
(bowling) ball, and chopping a watermelon. We see during these scenes that
Charlie is curious about his origins and frustrated that neither David nor Michael
gives him honest answers about the identity of his mother. In truth, Michael
killed her and was subsequently urged by his comrades
to raise the orphaned infant in penance. This questionably-advised act connects
both the best and worst aspects of Michael’s character. While Charlie seems to
have had a luxurious life under Michael, his stepfather probably never
thought much of the idea (note that the boys’ actual supervision is handled by an employee). By reaching a little, one may even suggest that Michael’s need to mask his feelings around Charlie may have indirectly
led him to robbery – an outlet for exercising his aggression.

After their training, Charlie and Tony feel empowered enough to
go on the counteroffensive. While David relocates Annie, the
brothers pursue Tank. They follow him to a
poor neighborhood where he lives with his blind mother (Pamela Maxton)
and best him in a fight. Afterwards, Tank tearfully confesses to his mother about his involvement in crime. He allies himself with Charlie and Tony when they promise to help
him break away from the gang, and his information leads them to form a more
cohesive plan: to bring the robbers into the open, they’ll need to hand over the pizza slice.

Tank directs the brothers to Alan’s second locale: an oceanfront bar. It’s staffed
by three little people who attack Charlie and Tony. What ensues is an odd fight, but a genuine fight scene nonetheless. It’s played for laughs,
but I want to believe that this is a statement about the accessibility
of the martial arts. It’s a lesson that David should take to heart – that disability needn’t hinder one from being a fighter. Whatever the
case, the fight spurs Alan to chase the brothers up a mountain outside the bar,
and at the peak, he takes his turn to fight them. Prior to relinquishing the pizza,
the boys test out David’s moves with great success – preparing them for the
final confrontations.

TRIVIA: The mountaintop fight is a nod
to kung fu movies of the 70s. These were often low-budget productions filmed on
tight schedules, and mountaintops were ideal settings for battles: the bare
terrain allowed the filmmakers to bypass continuity between shots and film from
any angle.

With all pieces of the mold together, Michael’s gang gathers in the evening
to prepare for a morning retrieval mission. However, not only does Alan
witness Tank making a secret telephone call, but Michael offers an anonymous
tip to the police about the upcoming operation. When morning comes, the
reassembled keys are used to unlock the vault. To everyone’s outrage, the
police arrive in the middle of it. Alan blames Tank, and Michael is happy to shoot him. After
Michael commands his remaining gang to split up, Alan and Thunder discover that Michael has already taken the gold from the vault. As far as I can
figure, Michael visited the refinery in the night to steal it, and his
plan is to hide in a subarea of the refinery with Jenny while the rest
of his gang is arrested. It wasn’t his design to shoot Tank, but one less
witness probably suits him fine. His growing nonchalance to murder foreshadows
what’s to come.

Alan and Thunder evade the police, but are so angry that they take
the time to engage Tony and Charlie when they arrive on the scene. The boys manage to defeat them, but when they see David entering
the refinery, Charlie goes after his uncle while Tony remains behind to ensure
that Thunder is arrested (Alan attempts an escape but is also apprehended). Charlie
follows David into the bowels of the facility and is surprised to come upon him
arguing with his father. Having realized what’s going
on, David implores Michael to turn himself in. (It’s never revealed how David
puts the pieces together, but it’s possible that he recognized Michael’s fighting
style at the club. That would help explain his subsequent moving out of Michael’s
house.) Fearing that David plans to incriminate them, Jenny points a gun but is knocked out when Charlie intervenes. Michael – already on edge – snaps and strikes Charlie, accusing him of
betrayal. David finally reveals the truth about Charlie’s mother, and as the
boy is overcome by sorrow, we see the final moments of Michael trying
to maintain the façade. He’s clearly uncomfortable with having been compromised,
and for a few seconds, he says nothing. When he finally confirms the story, it’s clear that he’s held it in for a long time and is defiant about
the fact. What’s more, he promises to kill anyone who
attempts to stop him as he leaves.

However, Michael proves to be better than his word: as Charlie and David emerge
from the basement, he attacks them with construction vehicles. When this fails,
he engages Charlie hand-to-hand. It seems as
though Michael intends to rid himself of both another witness and an unwanted
responsibility at the same time. He has the upper hand, but when he attempts to
beat David to death, Charlie kicks into overdrive…and Michael’s butt. Before a
decisive victor can emerge, though, the police arrive and arrest Michael. Tony is heartbroken at the realization that his
father is a criminal and blames the arrest on Charlie. Like
Michael, Tony invents an instance of betrayal to justify his frustration.

The bond between the brothers is in peril when, sometime later, both appear at
the national tournament. Tony tears his way through
opponents en route to meeting Charlie in the final match. (Notice that while the previous tournament was governed by point-fighting stipulations, this one
is full-contact with the competitors wearing no headgear.) Charlie is apprehensive about fighting his brother, but
following a penalty for passivity and a stern talking-to from the referee
(played by the late Grandmaster Kenneth Penland), Charlie’s fire is ignited and
he strikes back – leading to the best action scene of the film. It’s not clear
what spurs him, but I’d venture that it’s Michael’s influence: he feels he’s
been wronged and is tired of holding back. However, he eventually drops his guard – perhaps making a conscious decision to stem his stepfather’s sway – and allows Tony to finish him. As he realizes what he’s done,
Tony falls to Charlie’s side in despair, but Charlie awakens. As the two celebrate their mutual victory, their bond is restored.

The film leaves some questions unanswered. We can assume that Michael and his
gang will be imprisoned for a long time, but it’s never stated what’s to become
of the kids. It’s possible that the brothers will live with their uncle, but what
of Annie, who’s curiously absent from the final scenes? What of Tank’s blind
mother, who’s now seemingly living alone in a graffiti-covered house? We’re not
even aware of what becomes of Michael’s wealth. Will the boys go from having a
private gym and a pool to sleeping under newspapers like David was in the beginning?

Nevertheless, I’m pleased by the upbeat nature of the ending and of the film in
general. Though Breathing Fire has an
unfortunate tendency to be a little gratuitous with its violence, it’s still a predominantly
idealistic story that illustrates unlikely bonds between people. The scenes
between the four main heroes are comforting in their optimism. It’s something
of a coming-of-age tale, and fans of this particular subgenre – especially its 80s
incarnations – will probably enjoy it. What’s more, the fight scenes are pretty
darn good, with long takes filled with intricate exchanges. Everybody puts on a
good show, but the standout star is Jonathan Ke Quan, who graduates from his
quirky nostalgic roles in The Goonies
and the second Indiana Jones movie to a genuine kicking machine. Give me this guy over his more famous peers any
day.

I recommend this movie to fun-loving fu fans, but exercise care when purchasing
it on disc. Breathing Fire has
received so many releases under different distributors that I think it might
be in the public domain, and at least one of these – the Echo Bridge version –
features very muddy video quality. I recommend the Westlake Home Entertainment release
for a sharper picture and brighter colors.

Breathing
Fire (1991)
Directed by Brandon Pender (second
unit director of Death Match),
Brandon De-Wilde, Lou Kennedy
Written by Tao-Liang Tan (Last Breath), Raymond Mahoney, Wayne Yee
Starring Jonathan Ke Quan, Eddie
Saavedra, Ed Neil (Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers), Jerry Trimble (The Master)
Cool costars: Bolo Yeung (Bloodsport), Allen Tackett (They Still Call Me Bruce), T.J. Storm (Black Cobra). The tournaments feature
many brief cameos of accomplished martial artists, but the one I’d like to
highlight is the late Master William Holland, playing the muscular competitor
who tries to intimidate Charlie and Tony before the fights.
Title refers to: There’s only metaphorical fire being breathed here, when the Moore family allows rage to control their actions.
Potential triggers: Group violence, violence against women, domestic violence, child abuse
Copyright Golden Pacific and Art
Studios