Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985) Cannon/Action-Adventure RT: 95 minutes Rated R (language, strong violence, torture, brief nudity) Director: Lance Hool Screenplay: Arthur Silver, Larry Levinson and Steve Bing Music: Brian May Cinematography: Jorge Stahl Jr. Release date: March 1, 1985 (US) Cast: Chuck Norris, Soon-Tek Oh, Steven Williams, Bennett Ohta, Cosie Costa, Joe Michael Terry, John Wesley, David Chung, Professor Toru Tanaka, Christopher Cary, Pierre Issot. Box Office: $10.7M (US)
Rating: ***
You may have noticed some major continuity issues between the Missing in Action and the prequel Missing in Action 2: The Beginning. Most noticeably, the circumstances of hero Col. Braddock’s (Norris) capture by the North Vietnamese are different as are the commanders running the POW camp where he’s being held. I’m not sure how much of an explanation this is, but it turns out there was a last-minute switcheroo on Cannon’s part. Both movies were shot at the same time with the intention of releasing them in reverse order. Originally, MIA 1 was to be the sequel. Then the studio decided it was the better movie and released it ahead of the planned first movie which then became the prequel. I still don’t understand the story changes, but at least I now know why they were released only three-and-a-half months apart.
Braddock’s story in Missing in Action 2: The Beginning begins with a botched mission that ends with Braddock and his men bailing out of a crashing helicopter into a river. As each one jumps, titles come up informing the audience of their names, ranks and MIA status. Ten years later, they’re still being held in a POW camp run by sadistic Col. Yen (Oh, Good Guys Wear Black). They are Braddock, hot-tempered Mazilli (Costa, 10 to Midnight), sickly Frankie (Wesley, Nothing but Trouble), young Corp. Opelka (Terry, Going Undercover) and traitorous Nester (Williams, The Blues Brothers) who switched sides in exchange for better living conditions than his fellow countrymen.
Braddock and Yen are locked in a psychological battle of wills over the former signing a confession admitting his so-called “war crimes” in exchange for the release of all the American captives. Naturally, the heroic American refuses to betray his country and every soldier that fought for it. In turn, Yen tortures him and his men both physically and mentally. In an entirely superfluous subplot, Yen is in the opium business with a shady Frenchman (Issot). The only way it might possibly serve the plot is that the Frenchman has a helicopter.
Most of Missing in Action 2: The Beginning focuses on the brutal conditions the prisoners are forced to live under. Yin gets his kicks torturing the American POWs. For example, he drags a prisoner out of the cage and tells him he’s been found guilty of his war crimes before ordering one of his men to shoot him in the head. Of course, the chamber is revealed to be empty. Frankie contracts malaria, but Yin won’t provide medical care unless Braddock signs the confession.
The camp itself is supposedly escape-proof (YEAH, RIGHT!). In addition to the armed guards, one of which is the behemoth that is Professor Toru Tanaka of An Eye for an Eye (a favorite Norris opponent), they’re surrounded by miles of booby-trapped jungle terrain, a raging river and an impassible bridge guarded by a soldier with a flamethrower. If we’ve learned anything from the MIA movies, it’s that Norris is impervious to all of it.
It takes a while for Braddock to escape, but once he does it’s game over for Yin and his small army. That’s when Missing in Action 2: The Beginning gets good. Well, it gets as good as it gets. Norris, being his usual taciturn self, brings it on again as the one-man army determined to refight a war we lost in the name of making sure every last American POW goes home. Thankfully, director Lance Hool (Steel Dawn) doesn’t allow his movie to get bogged down by the same politics as its predecessor. He keeps his focus trained on the action; that is, after he gives us scene after scene of Braddock and his men being tortured by the cartoonishly sadistic villain played with devilish glee by Oh. It’s tough to watch sometimes; the scene where a burlap sack containing a live rat is placed over Braddock’s head while he’s hanging upside down is particularly nauseating. He handles it the same way Conan dealt with the hungry vulture while nailed to the Tree of Woe.
You can tell Missing in Action 2: The Beginning is a low-budget job by virtue of its one main setting, the POW camp. It was shot in the Philippines, a mecca for exploitation filmmakers. The movie itself isn’t especially well made; it’s simple and single-minded in its purpose. The action scenes are nicely done though. They’re sufficiently violent and exciting. Once again, Norris racks up a mighty impressive body count. The final confrontation between Braddock and Yin allows the star to show off his awesome martial arts skills.
In the end, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning is a decent matinee flick Golan-Globus style. They may work cheap, but they know what audiences want and deliver it in spades. It’s in perfect keeping with the jingoistic mindset of the 80s wherein our greatest defense against foreign enemies was a laconic action hero with a huge arsenal of weapons. I’ll drink to that.
