On March 19 of this year, Carlos Ray Norris roundhouse kicked his way into the afterlife after spending the last 50 years being seen as a legitimate action badass, a guy who seemed to be a bigger-than-life figure, and a hero to many Gen Xers. We knew him as Chuck Norris. In 1972, he played Colt in the Bruce Lee martial arts classic, The Way of the Dragon. At that time, he was an incredibly skilled martial artist. In fact, he was a champion and a very difficult guy to face off against for years, leading up to his casting as Bruce Lee’s nemesis in that film. Lee recognized Norris as an appropriate opponent.

A few years later, Norris became an action star of his own in Breaker, Breaker, Good Guys Wear Black, A Force of One, and The Octagon. Going into the 80s, Norris was well-positioned to become a major action star. After the phenomenally popular Lone Wolf McQuade, Cannon Films pounced on the opportunity to cast Norris as their leading action star for an entire decade, solidifying him as a mythical figure kids grew up watching, later turning him into a popular meme by creating well-meaning jokes about how tough he was in the face of impossible opponents (like natural catastrophes, celestial objects, and, yes, even death).

Decades later, Norris largely retired from acting, instead appearing in commercials, doing philanthropic work in areas of the world with less-than-satisfactory HIV/AIDS care, and occasionally doing political rallies with conservative candidates. While I don’t agree with his politics or religion, I do appreciate Norris for that action star status he had when I was a kid, just looking for action movies and punching and shooty shoot guys on a Saturday afternoon on cable. On March 19, 2026, a big piece of the youth of a lot of guys I know, myself included, was sad to hear Norris was hospitalized in Hawaii for a sudden medical emergency and had subsequently died. I had just weeks previously written a review for Missing in Action, but opted to largely leave that review alone upon release, so this already-planned follow-up’s preamble now serves as the official B-Movie Enema eulogy for a man who will most definitely continue to appear on the site. Rest in peace, Chuck Norris.

And now, let’s talk about Missing in Action 2: The Beginning.

Missing in Action was kind of rushed into production so that Cannon could get its film out before the First Blood sequel, Rambo: First Blood Part II, was to be released to likely all the monies at the box office. But check it out… Yes, Missing in Action was popular, but there were actually two movies about POWs being rescued floating out there. The first of these scripts was brought to Cannon by Norris and Lance Hool, the director of Missing in Action 2: The Beginning. Cannon already had a POWs movie they wanted to make and wanted Norris to take the lead on. So that script Cannon had started working on pre-production for became Missing in Action. Hool’s project would be reworked as a prequel to that first film, thus making it Missing in Action 2: The Beginning.

Both films were shot back-to-back. The first film came out on November 16, 1984, and this sequel hit theaters only five months later, on March 1, 1985. While the first film’s release was to beat Rambo, by Cannon’s own design, in one of the earliest examples of a mockbuster release that The Asylum would later employ, I might add, The Beginning also beat Rambo to theaters as well. So, let’s travel back to 1972, ten years before the first film’s action, and see where all this business began with Colonel James Thomas Braddock and Vietnam POWs.

So, yes, it is 1972. Colonel Braddock, to the surprise of some of the men he commands, hitches a ride with a couple of grunts over into Cambodia in a chopper. He claims he is just along for the ride and has business to attend to. On the way, they discover a group of soldiers pinned down by North Vietnamese gunfire. He and the others in the chopper radioed in that they would be coming in to pick up survivors and lay down some additional Fuck-Yeah-American air support.

They manage to escape, but only for the moment. The Viet-Cong managed to make the rescue especially dangerous when they swarmed in and shot the chopper pilot. We get a rundown of who is missing in action after this mission. Captain David Nestor, Master Sergeant Ernest Franklin, Corporal Lawrence Opelka, Lieutenant Anthony Mazilli, and, of course, Colonel James Braddock are all officially listed as M.I.A. after their chopper was shot down and they were unrecovered. I like how they did this. Each character is shown in freeze frame, then their name and rank are typed onto the screen, before finally getting “MISSING IN ACTION” stamped over them. It’s pretty good.

Admittedly, I’m a tad confused here, and that’s not a great way to be during a Cannon Films production. Look, I get it, this script was something else that was then turned into Missing in Action 2: The Beginning. It was independently written and separate from the original, fine. Buuuut…

We actually saw what led to their capture in the first film. It wasn’t that their chopper was shot down. They were captured when they got overrun. Braddock was on the ground with his battalion. They got ambushed and trapped. Then, they were kept in a prison camp run by the cruel General Vinh. There were also more than, like, five guys. You got the impression that Braddock was captured with maybe ten other dudes. Those guys were killed (or died) one by one over the years. Here? It’s Braddock and four other guys, and they are imprisoned by a completely different guy named Colonel Yin.

Oh, and after that opening action sequence, we are shown mid 80s footage of Ronald Reagan giving a eulogy for a soldier who was recovered and brought home from Vietnam and entombed in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then, we transition back to Vietnam with some time passing because everyone’s beards have grown out and their clothes are tattered. Is this the escape just before the last movie? Did that need a whole movie? I’m so confused.

Anyway, Reagan mentioned something about Vietnam ignoring the Geneva Convention regarding keeping prisoners of war. So that means Chuck Norris has to bring this up to Yin. Yin says they aren’t prisoners of war. They are common criminals. Yin will not release anyone until Braddock confesses to… I dunno, being a badass? Hating the Vietnamese? Regrets making Top Dog? Whatever he’s confessing to could be any one, none, or all of those things. I think, if there is anything regarding actual continuity, it will be that Yin wants Braddock to confess to war crimes, but I don’t know. I’m not putting a lot of faith into Cannon being interested in, well, canon.

In the prison camp, Braddock tries to watch over the American soldiers. There are other Vietnamese prisoners who are friendly with the Americans. One of the Vietnamese prisoners even helps an American attempt to escape. That American guy’s name was Harry. I say “was” because he gets to a rope bridge where a guard is waiting for him and flamethrowers the shit out of him.

Not all of the American prisoners are on the same page or have the same goals. Braddock, Franklin, Opelka, and Mazilli are all in a pretty bad way. They are skinny, malnourished, and often get beaten on. Oh, and Harry is a crispy critter, but he was part of a larger group of Americans who were originally at the camp in the past. Nestor is a little cleaner and seems to be better treated by the guards.

Nestor is kind of playing a “house negro” kind of role, I think. He plays nice with Yin. He even tells Braddock that he’d go to bat for Braddock to keep him from getting roughed up as much as he is. Naturally, everyone thinks Nestor has gone cowardly. He claims he’s only being pragmatic. They’ve been here for years. Clearly, the United States is not coming for them. They’ve been written off as lost. Granted, this is something that Yin tries to tell the Americans to soften their resolve, but it’s not exactly as easy as Braddock remaining prideful and putting the other Americans at risk of being roughed up.

Nestor actually outright blames Braddock’s pride for how the other Americans are treated.

Mazilli is especially in a sour headspace. When he was captured, his wife was expecting his child. He’s never seen his kid. Other guys talk about their children, who they knew before going off to war, and he’s melodramatically always lamenting how unfair it is that he’s never seen his kid. He says he’s just not tough like Braddock. Because Braddock is Chuck Norris.

The next morning, Opelka is dragged out and told by Yin that he’s been found guilty of war crimes and is being sentenced to death. They hold a gun to his head and pull the trigger multiple times, each time, no bullet. It’s just psychological terror. Opelka returned to the Americans’ cell broken and sobbing. He’s cared for by a kindly Vietnamese guy named Captain Ho.

Speaking of Ho, he tries to impress upon Nestor that it might seem nice that Yin has treated him well after Nestor did what Yin asked of him, but he doesn’t really give a shit about the Captain. What he wants, what he’s always wanted, is for Braddock to confess to committing war crimes. He’s been after that for years. It’s driven Yin crazy.

What’s more, Ho says that Nestor is delusional if he thinks that Yin will do anything good for the Americans if Braddock confesses. Nestor keeps repeating what Yin always says – confess, and he will allow the Americans to be released. Ho says that Yin just wants the confession as something of a trophy. When Braddock finally confesses, Yin will kill them all.

After Yin fails to get the confession, this time by telling Braddock that his wife is getting remarried, and if he confesses, he’ll be sure to have Braddock home in time for her wedding, Yin sees that Braddock is in a street fightin’ mood. He tells Nestor that he will be Braddock’s opponent. If he doesn’t fight Braddock, Yin will put Nestor back into the American cell. Nestor will likely not be so popular there as he once was.

Braddock tries not to fight Nestor, but he doesn’t really have a choice. They both put a couple of really good licks on each other, but Braddock wins by nearly choking Nestor to death. Yin’s giant guard, Lao, then beats on Nestor, causing Braddock to fight back on Nestor’s behalf, leading him to take even more of a beating. Also, I should note that Lao kind of looks like a Southeast Asian version of Bolo Yeung. He’s played by Professor Toru Tanaka. What’s he a professor of? I dunno. Probably of ass-kicking.

Anyway, something here I found myself quickly getting tired of about 30 minutes into the movie is how “perfect” Braddock seems to be. He refuses to give Yin what he wants. He’s too proud to confess to some bullshit that may or may not ease up some of the pressure on the other Americans. I agree that Yin is not to be trusted, but the other guys are in pretty bad shape. Mazilli is nearly broken over never having seen his son. Opelka is psychologically broken. Braddock is pretty sure Franklin has malaria. Braddock’s pride and his consistent rebellion may be preventing his soldiers from getting some relief, either by way of imprinting his stubbornness onto them or whatever. It’s like he’s P.O.W. Jesus. The others around him see him as above reproach, when there have to be other ways for some of them not to constantly get tortured or beaten up for years now.

There’s this other plot going on here. Yin is in business with a Frenchman named Francois, because of course that’s his name. They grow, cultivate, and sell opium. Francois thinks the only people who can stand in the way of their opium business are the American captives. Francois would like Yin to kill them. Yin promises he has the situation under control. That’s probably Yin’s obsession with breaking Braddock.

But how does Francois pay for the opium that Yin farms for him? By delivering boxes and boxes of weapons. Braddock, realizing that the off-limits hut they never knew what was being kept in there is full of munitions, sees that as their key to escape. Francois does have knowledge of the occasional search party from the American Army sweeping through, looking for camps. I think we now understand where we’re headed for the big climax in a little bit.

An Australian man named Emerson shows up, taking pictures. He is with a large group from the International House of Freedom Pancakes or something. Anyway, he says his team is looking for P.O.W.s. He says that he’s placed a homing beacon in the jungle. He can give a signal to the team, and he will leave peacefully after obtaining the information he is after, or if he doesn’t give the signal, his team will come in and kill all of Yin’s men.

Yin says he could kill the guy or simply lock him up until he’s ready to reveal the signal. However, Yin allows Emerson to talk to the prisoners. The Americans think he’s there to bring them all home. Except, well, Emerson comes clean to them. He’s actually been after Francois. There is no group of people there to free the prisoners. He’s alone. Francois flies in with his helicopter to pick up some hookers he dropped off the day before. Emerson tries to hurry off to “give his team the signal,” knowing that Francois knows who he is. However, Yin stops him, and Francois reveals he’s just a guy asking too many questions about him and their business.

In the most shocking thing that either Missing In Action movie contains, Yin tries the whole “I sentence you to death” thing he did to Opelka, only to reveal this time it’s very for real, and his brains gets blown all the way out of his head.

Oh yeah, when Francois arrived the first time to drop those whores off, Opelka ran off during the chaos. You see, Francois uses an American chopper. That’s what created some of the chaos that led to him finding an opening. Yin claims that Opelka was killed. As punishment for that action, Yin burns a letter from Braddock’s wife. Meanwhile, as for Franklin, he’s dying from malaria. To save him, Braddock finally agrees to sign the confession about his “war crimes.”

Now, Yin seems to be good on his promise that he’ll let the Americans go free. Braddock doesn’t exactly trust this. You see, Franklin wasn’t given a treatment for malaria. He was doped up on opium. Sure, Franklin seems to feel better, but it’s because Yin overdosed him. He’s going to die pretty soon. But actually not from the fuckin’ opium. No, Yin douses Franklin with gasoline and lights him on fire, cremating him alive.

See Braddock’s fiery hatred for Yin, allowing him to launch a 40-minute plan to escape!

Braddock fakes his hanging so he can attack a guard, break his neck, and get free. He then manages to get through a fence by carefully elbowing the shit out of the bamboo that makes up the wall. He kills a couple of guards in a hut outside the walls. He then gets to that rope bridge and crawls under it to avoid the guard there.

Back at the prison camp, Yin is being a major asshole. He tells Mazilli that Braddock has abandoned him. He says that Braddock will be dead tomorrow. Then, he’ll kill Mazilli. But, hey, Yin says that Mazilli doesn’t have to be lonely for his last 24 hours of life. He’ll put Mazilli’s pet chicken, which he’s been caring for over the years, into the pit he’s in. Oh, but he’ll snap the poor chicken’s neck first just to fuck with Mazilli and make him cry.

I like that Nestor is serving Yin and one of his lieutenants dinner while the Vietnamese guys talk about killing him to rid themselves of all the Americans. But Nestor’s like, “Um… I don’t think it’s a good idea to kill me.” When Yin asks why he thinks that, Nestor tells him he knows how Braddock thinks. He knows Braddock will be back for revenge.

And revenge is a dish best served Norris. I… I think that’s how that saying goes. Braddock makes his way to the munitions hut and gets himself some tools of the killin’ trade. He flamethrowers the fuck out of a guy, and sets up some bombs to bitch up the prison camp. Like, for real, he basically blows up the entire camp.

Braddock frees Mazilli, and they flee into the jungle. They set some booby traps to blow up some Viet-knobs. Braddock sends Mazilli on his way while he blows up some guys and plans to return to free Captain Ho. As for the other Vietnamese prisoners aside from Ho? Eh… He may not save them. They are neither white nor Ho.

Braddock is so good at creating problems for these Vietnamese guys that he’s managed to reduce Vin’s lieutenant into a grunting, knuckle-dragging caveman. Vin, so dead-set on killing Braddock, kills Francois and has his guys take the chopper to go look for Braddock and Mazilli. They… they didn’t have to do that. Braddock is back at the prison camp. He blows more of it up and then goes off into the jungle again.

I feel like we’ve done this dance already, but here we are.

This time, Braddock discovers he’s not the only crazed American in the jungle. Opelka is not dead and still hanging around. Braddock tells him to go find Mazilli, but Opelka decides to join him on this heroic mission of good ol’ Fuck Yeah American revenge. The first attempt to draw Braddock out is by having Yin’s lieutenant set up a trap by making it look like he’s turned on Yin and planning to kill him. Opelka is the one who realizes that it wasn’t Yin who was shot and killed. It was one of the prisoners. The second attempt is by Yin himself. He reveals he’s captured Mazilli. He gives Braddock 30 seconds to show himself, or he’ll kill him.

Nestor tricks Yin and the others into thinking he’s going to kill Mazilli himself. He manages to kill several of the soldiers while Yin escapes. Nestor is gunned down as Mazilli runs off to reunite with Braddock and Opelka. During all this final shootout, Captain Ho is freed, and he’s now shooting guns and blowing up people too. After they believe Yin has been killed by grenades in his house, Braddock, Ho, Opelka, and Mazilli fly off in Francois’ chopper. After they leave, Yin reveals that he’s still alive. He was hiding under the floor. He looks out the window to see the chopper flying off, but discovers that Braddock is behind him, waiting to make sure the bad guy really is dead.

Yin says he wants to fight Braddock man-to-man without weapons. Braddock’s like, “Yeah, nah… I sentence you to death.” It looks like he’s going to shoot him with the pistol, but it’s out of bullets. They karate the shit out of each other. But you see… he’s fighting Chuck Norris? Yin might have some skills, but he’s no match for the Fuck Yeah American might of Chuck.

Braddock does this thing where he punches Yin in the stomach, then, like, positions his fingers up under his ribs? It looks like that would hurt like hell. It basically leaves Yin in a crumpled mess on the floor of his house. Braddock tells Yin that it’s over and walks off. He reveals he’s wired the place up and triggers an explosion. The chopper lifts off to heroic, patriotic music while we focus on the smoldering remains of Yin’s house, and, presumably, Yin.

This movie isn’t as good as the first. I’ve already kind of illustrated one of the problems. I don’t mind the stoic hero man in a movie. I’m not one of the guys who dumbfuck online reviewers of a certain Scottish variety who think Hollywood should rid the movies of stoic hero mans. No, there’s a place for them. However, there is some truth that Braddock’s stoicism and pride kind of got these guys extra tortured for years. I’m not saying he needed to go down Nestor’s path, but he was almost too heroic and prideful for his own good.

The biggest problem with his stoicism is that it makes Braddock booorrrrrrrrinnnnnnggggg. He’s so dull. This makes the first hour of the movie dull as shit too. The final 30 minutes? No notes. Exciting. Fun. Blowin’ up bad guys. Love it. The first hour of the movie to get to that? Fuckin’ slog. While not literally repetitive, it felt repetitive. If I could apply a term to the final 30 minutes, it would be a “Chuck Norris movie.” You have all the things you sign up for when watching a Chuck Norris movie. For the first hour, though? I’d label it as “Vietnamsploitation torture porn.” It’s maybe meant to tip the cap and salute the brave men who endured being captured and poorly treated as prisoners of war, but it plays like everyone’s least favorite thing boomers like to tell younger generations, “Freedom isn’t free.” It’s like the movie wants us to see and feel and repeat all the stuff these prisoners may or may not have endured just so we can make sure that we feel conditioned and committed to telling each and every soldier, “Thank you for your service” (something my own veteran father does NOT want people telling him – especially since he had no choice as he was drafted and felt 18 months of his life was taken from him without choice or desire to do so).

Watching a movie like Missing in Action, I’m kind of having fun with the silly revenge plot. Watching a movie like Missing in Action 2: The Beginning is less like a silly, fun movie. It feels like I’m having a patriotic sermon preached at me. I was kind of bored by it. At least I can say I wasn’t picking up that long-standing bad blood toward Vietnamese folks while watching this one. So, some points there… I guess?

I suppose I should also circle back around to that continuity problem this movie has. He’s free at the end of this movie. As are all of the surviving people he served with. That is not how he freed himself in the first movie. I wish I could rewire my brain to not care as much as I apparently do, but dammit… I’m a comic book reader. I just have this kind of brain. I can’t help it. In a way, this movie feels like the Italian ripoff sequel to the first one. The best way to approach this is not as a movie and its sequel/prequel. You need to approach this like the Mad Max movies. These are tales people tell of the mystery man who was Braddock. These were two entirely different concepts that happened to be shopped to Cannon at the same time. Without the name Braddock applied to Norris, you wouldn’t connect them outside of, well, the titles of the fucking movies. Still, you need to think of these movies as entirely separate concepts and films that really are not connected with one another.

Someday I’ll get to Braddock: Missing in Action III, but I need it to be a little more stupid, in those fun, good ways, than this movie was.

I do have a fun one for next week, though! Some of you may know I’m a big fan of James Bond. Some of my all-time favorite movies are Bond films. That also means I’m a fan of the knock-offs, the imitations, and the pastiches of that cherished franchise. It’s been a long time since I watched these American spy flicks, so let’s have some fun with the campy 1966 action comedy Our Man Flint, starring the great James Coburn.

I’ll see all you groovy birds and cats in seven days!