Movie Review: Missing in Action II: The Beginning
Reviewed by Geno McGahee
“You lose.” – Braddock (Chuck Norris)
Growing up in the 1980s was great. Saturday morning cartoons and professional wrestling was outstanding. Around 1987, video stores began to pop up in my area and we had just gotten a VCR. I was 13 and rented a movie by the name of “MISSING IN ACTION II: THE BEGINNING.”
Chuck Norris starred as Braddock, a POW stuck in a camp as a prisoner of the evil Colonel Yin, played by Soon Tek-Oh. Now Tek-Oh was also in DEATH WISH IV: THE CRACKDOWN as the crooked cop, but his defining role is as Yin, a sadistic dictator that wants to break Braddock. Every time that Yin does something horrible that Braddock doesn’t like, he smiles and says “you lose.” I love that! I love when action films are like this … with cool catch lines.
The beginning of this film is very amusing. You begin with Braddock telling Yin that he will not get away with this, which sends Yin into a hilarious and spirited rant. It’s really over the top, but did I mention that I love over the top? I wasn’t a fan of OVER THE TOP with Stallone, but when the acting is such, I’m typically amused.
One of the coolest scenes that stuck with me as a child and now I find that I enjoy equally as much is when Yin hangs Braddock upside down with a burlap sack over his head. Inside the sack is an angry rat. As the rat attacks, blood can be seen dripping from the sack, prompting most of Braddock’s fellow POWs to believe that he has died. When they remove the bag, Braddock killed the rat by biting through its neck. Nasty stuff…great scene.
Yin allows his need to break Braddock effect his professional relationship with Francois (Pierre Issot). They are in the opium business and with the search parties looking for the POWs, there is a chance that Yin could jeopardize the business. When Francois steps up and makes his concerns known, Yin has none of it and chokes him out and then demands a calculator watch! I had one of those in junior high school. I used to think that they were so freaking cool.
Braddock escapes but seeks revenge and comes back to have a final showdown with Yin, a fellow martial arts expert. Now there were a lot of action stars emerging at this time like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and Sylvester Stallone, but none of them had the legit vibe. They all made great films (well Stallone not so much outside of the Rockys and FIRST BLOOD), but out of them all, Norris would be the one that I wouldn’t screw with. He is a bad ass in both film and real life…sure he put on that stupid cowboy hat and did WALKER TEXAS RANGER, but he was probably high or something…sniffing glue maybe. In his prime, he was a bad man and a decent actor.
MISSING IN ACTION II: THE BEGINNING is a great film with plenty of action and great characters. I highly recommend it.
RSR Rating: 7.5/10. You won’t lose.