While I’ve already covered the rather convoluted release process from Missing In Action and its sequel while reviewing the first movie, the behind the scenes machinations of the legendarily iffy Cannon Group is so hilariously brazen, it’s well worth going over it again.
Simply put, the studio decided to make an action franchise dealing with the fallout of the Vietnam war with the immovable visage of Chuck Norris as their star (remember, this is the rip-roaring, coke-snortin’ 80s where good taste went to die) and to cut costs, they decided to make parts 1 and 2 back to back. However, upon stepping back and looking at the results, it became worryingly obvious that Joseph Zito’s Part 2 was the far superior movie while Lance Hool’s original was deemed to be the less commercial (read: crap) of the two. However, in a typically Cannon move, owners Golan and Globus simply reversed the order of release, making Part 1 now a prequel that would sell due to its sequels success regardless of its quality.
But is Missing In Action 2: The Beginning really that bad?
Uh, pretty much, yeah.
It’s 1972 and Colonel James Braddock and his men find themselves caught by Vietnamese soldiers and slung into a godforsaken POW camp to wait out a term that presumably won’t end until they die. The fact that these brave, American boys are being held illegally doesn’t seem to concern the callous and sadistic Colonal Yin, who insists on placing his prisoners through a strict and unending regimen of mental and physical torture in order to break Braddock and get him to sign a confession that he is responsible for war crimes.
While his remaining, surviving comrades supports his decision despite Yin constantly banging on about how America has abandoned while talking shit about their families, Captain David Nester has bought into this rhetoric and has sided with his captors for much better treatment.
And so, while we patiently wait for an actual plot to kick in, the punishments continue, taking the form of execution fake-outs and a rather innovative use of a rat and a burlap sack, but the ritualistic abusing takes a slight break when its revealed that Yin is running a side hustle, growing opium for a French drug dealer named François (you know, because he can’t just be a sadistic leader of a POW camp, he has to deal drugs too), however, it’s the death of a malaria prone colleague that proves to be the last straw for out stoic hero.
Vowing to escape and take some 80s style vengence against his tormentors, Braddock bides his time until he can inflict maximum damage and heads off into the jungle to start picking off Yin’s men in ever more vicious ways. However, char broiling underlings with flamethrowers and blowing shit up with well placed charges is one thing, but can Braddock win out in a one on one battle with the obsessed Colonal Yin?
I mean… it is Chuck Norris, so the answer is somewhat obvious.
There’s a moment in Missing In Action 2 (formally 1) where this drab, miserable slog through the jungle manages to elevate itself above the mornful dirge of its plot where Norris’ steely Colonal is strung upside down by his ankles and a hungry rat is placed in a sack that then summarily tied around his head. While his fellow Americans look on in horror as he jerks and writhes in pain, the sack rapidly becomes stained from within with blood and after a short while, Braddock’s struggles and groans cease. However, once Soon-Tek Oh’s cruel villain removes the bag, we see that our hero has managed to kill the fucking rodent with his bare teeth and mottled thing hangs from his mouth like a mangled trophy. It’s the exact sort of ludicrous, crowd pleasing moment that the decade excelled in and while Missing In Action 1 (formally 2) managed to harness this better in a generic, First Blood Part 2, save-the-prisoners, kind of way, Missing In Action 2 makes the horrendous mistake of trying to make a jingoistic action movie that directly concern itself with the inhumane horrors of the Vietnam war.
To put it in another – rather distasteful – fashion, it would be about as disrespectful as setting the first Captain America movie primarily in Auschwitz and only have him show up in the last twenty minutes to save everyone. It’s not the last time Cannon would try to use real life atrocities to make a Chuck Norris vehicle fly as The Delta Force was heavily inspired by the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, but the fact that this movie delves primarily in the torture and humiliation of American GIs means that the film often feels as crass as an Italian Namsploitation film and as a result, often plays so grim it makes the fourth Rambo film look as chirpy as Hot Shots Part Deux.
While I’m not suggesting that a movie spent entirely in a POW camp should have the same tone as Con Air, the unrelenting brutality twinned with its rather juvenile nature just isn’t entertaining to watch as all manner of unspeakable act are perpetrated on our leads. One poor dude, relentlessly hammered by malaria, is given a fatal overdose of opium instead of a cure and then is cremated while they’re still alive, while elsewhere a random Aussie in disturbingly short shorts emerges from the jungle claiming that he’s part of an effort trying to disband illegal POW camps only for Yin to call his bluff and blow his brains out in excruciating close up while he begs for mercy. Of course, while all this is going on, Norris remains as comically stalwart as ever thanks to his lack of thespian talents while looking so haggard he could pass as a Lucio Fulci zombie and yet, despite being supposedly malnourished, he can still whup ass with the best of them – out fighting his nemesis in the suspiciously convenient finale and using explosives to nuke the camp into the upper atmosphere in a desperate attempt at catharsis.
However, Missing In Action 2’s greatest flaw is that it’s just plain dull, neither exciting or moving enough to justify its controversial setting and you can see why the sequel was fast tracked to go first.
Sluggish, cheap and thoroughly depressing, Cannon’s habit of merging dumb action with a touchy subject backfires in a way that’s more boring than incendiary and proves that Missing In Action 2 uses should have stayed exactly that: missing.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 