{"id":2321,"date":"2024-08-16T02:52:36","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T02:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2321"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:29:55","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:29:55","slug":"missing-in-action-2-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/16\/missing-in-action-2-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing in Action 2: The Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Missing in Action 2: The Beginning <\/strong>(1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, strong violence, torture, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lance Hool\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Arthur Silver, Larry Levinson and Steve Bing\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Brian May\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cinematography: Jorge Stahl Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 1, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $10.7M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0You may have noticed some major continuity issues between the Missing in Action and the prequel Missing in Action 2: The Beginning<\/strong>. Most noticeably, the circumstances of hero Col. Braddock\u2019s (Norris) capture by the North Vietnamese are different as are the commanders running the POW camp where he\u2019s being held. I\u2019m not sure how much of an explanation this is, but it turns out there was a last-minute switcheroo on Cannon\u2019s 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\u2019t understand the story changes, but at least I now know why they were released only three-and-a-half months apart.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Braddock\u2019s story in Missing in Action 2: The Beginning <\/strong>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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Braddock and Yen are locked in a psychological battle of wills over the former signing a confession admitting his so-called \u201cwar crimes\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Most of Missing in Action 2: The Beginning <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019ve learned anything from the MIA movies, it\u2019s that Norris is impervious to all of it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It takes a while for Braddock to escape, but once he does it\u2019s game over for Yin and his small army. That\u2019s when Missing in Action 2: The Beginning <\/strong>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\u2019t 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\u2019s tough to watch sometimes; the scene where a burlap sack containing a live rat is placed over Braddock\u2019s head while he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You can tell Missing in Action 2: The Beginning <\/strong>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\u2019t especially well made; it\u2019s simple and single-minded in its purpose. The action scenes are nicely done though. They\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the end, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning <\/strong>is a decent matinee flick Golan-Globus style. They may work cheap, but they know what audiences want and deliver it in spades. It\u2019s 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\u2019ll drink to that.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, strong violence, torture, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lance Hool\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Arthur Silver, Larry Levinson and Steve Bing\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Brian May\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cinematography: Jorge Stahl Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 1, 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Chuck Norris, Soon-Tek Oh, Steven Williams, Bennett Ohta, Cosie Costa, Joe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Missing-in-Action-2-The-Beg.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2321"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3327,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2321\/revisions\/3327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}