The eccentric ups and downs and chaotic business practices of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’ Cannon Group are well documented, but one of the most amusing is that of the ralod fire production of Chuck Norris’ Missing In Action 1 and 2. Simply put, the second movie was actually made first and the first second, but after it became apparent that Joseph Zito’s sequel was the better movie and therefore more commercial, it was subsequently released as the original, with the earlier, shittier, movie released second as the prequel adventure: Missing In Action II: The Beginning.
While this may clue you in to the type of quality that comes with kind of production, there’s certain things you can still count on: the action will be explosive; Norris will wade through countless enemies like they weren’t even there and modern notions of political correctness will be obliterated like a Vietnamese death camp. Strap yourselves in people, we’re going to action trash central and we’re taking a Huey.
Ten years after escaping a seven-year stint in a POW camp during the horrors of the Vietnam war, Colonel James Braddock and his immaculately masculine beard are still haunted by the men left behind after America pulled out. When not being triggered with ‘Nam flashbacks by watching Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends on the tube, he’s been reluctant to aid his government in investigating the likelihood of such an issue and after a particularly violent bout of open-shirted, beer swigging, he decides to finally take the suits up on their offer and return to offer his expertise.
However, after barely setting foot in the country, Braddock is promptly accused of war crimes in a public hearing by the scheming General Trau and when he isn’t bristling with barely concealed rage at the whole un-Americaness of the situation, he’s hitting on Lenore, the senator’s sexy aide. But of course, this is all a ruse and the first chance he gets, Braddock dons an all black ensemble, shimmies down the side of a building and heads off into Saigon to get a lay of the land and possibly choke out the occasional sentry in a quest for the truth.
After discovering where the remaining POWs are being held by breaking into Trau’s fortified estate and hurling a knife into his chest (Braddock may not know the meaning of the word fear, but he also doesn’t quite have a good grasp on the phrase “international incident” either), our impossibly steely hero vows to right past wrongs, hooks up with his super-grizzled, old war buddy, Jack Tucker, and forges into the jungles of Saigon in a bullet proof river boat faster than you can say “Rambo: First Blood Part 2”.
To anyone else, this would be essentially a one-man suicide mission, but Braddock is a man who flosses his fucking teeth with danger and rinses and spits with death, and nothing will stop him from saving those me still missing in action.
Thanks to the blunt stylings of Cannon, Missing In Action seems to be less a functioning action movie and more of a stunningly heavy handed attempt at catharsis so unrelentingly bone headed, it ultimately makes Rambo feel like Born On The Forth Of July, but while even a modicum of common sense suggests that this movie should be treated like the idiotic, insensitive, dumpster fire it so obviously is, Chuck Norris’ foray into the Vietnam war is an 80s goldmine of unintentionally amusing tropes. Basically so exploitative, it could have given me Nam flashbacks (and I was born in ’76!), it’s nowhere near as perfect in its ridiculousness than, say, Invasion USA, but it’s a movie that’s been bludgeoned so hard in the kidneys with the idiot stick, it doubtlessly was pissing moron-blood in the morning and as a result, its fucking hilarious.
I’m sure somewhere, somehow, someone thought that Missing In Action’s cartoonishly patriotic heart was in the right place, but thanks to a script that features all the nuance and tact of a play-though of 80s coin-OP, Operation Wolf, instead feels astoundingly crass, especially considering that the man chosen to be the face of this enterprise has the emoting capabilities of a folded deckchair. But Norris is as Norris does and the film gives him plenty of opportunities to build on his legacy of superhuman toughness, be it getting up in the middle of a hearing to give the epic stink-eye to the “witnesses” of his fabricated war crimes until one breaks down and apologises (of course, big Chuck forgives him), to instantly fabricating an alibi for murdering James Hong’s villainous Trau by leaping into bed with a stunned Lenore and pretends that they’ve been banging all night.
Of course, the modern running joke that Norris’ is some kind of immortal god of emotion-free testosterone is immensely helped by the huge amounts of plot armour he wears at all times and the baffling choices of the men out to kill him. For example: why on earth would you bother hiding an assassin in Braddock’s hotel closet when you had a a guy based across the street with a grenade launcher aimed at his window, don’t Vietnamese assassins communicate or something?
Matters are thankfully enlivened by the sweaty, drawling talents of the legendary M. Emmett Walsh who is drafted in to don an ever changing array of horrific, Hawaiian shirts and complain, cheat, back up Braddock despite his choice of attire being worryingly visible next to his buddy’s chamoe and revel in the fact that his character is a flagrant and unrepentant whoremonger.
However, while the weird and wonkily wonderful sights that the movie contains is undoubtedly mana from heaven to trash enthusiasts, those with more modern sensibilities will no doubt be repelled at what they find. Alongside the expected xenophobia that casts the majority of the Vietnamese as sinister sadists (it’s Cannon, for god’s sake), the movie’s repeated and fumbled attempt at gravitas, seemingly thinks that holding the frame on countless American GI as they’re mown down, or the sight of a child killed in the cross fire of a bungled assassination attempt, ends up about as touching and poignant as a two hour YouTube video of men getting hit in the balls.
And yet, if you’re on its wacky, take no prisoners, 80s, wavelength, Missing In Action is often funnier than most comedies as the frenzied direction make the movie all the more chaotic the longer it goes on.
Be it the fact that Braddock doesn’t even get to invade Saigon until there’s only forty minutes left of the film, the comically genius shot of him rising out of the water with a huge machine gun while villains laugh at him, or the final, freeze-framed shot of our hero literally busting down the door of a Vietnamese press conference, dragging saved, yet bedraggled POWs behind him as triumphant proof; the only things truly Missing In Action here is intelligence and dignity… thank god.
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 