This week’s pick is yet another classic from the world of Golan Globus a.k.a. Cannon Films, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985) which was directed by Lance Hool and stars Chuck “White Lightning” Norris as Colonel James Braddock in this prequel to the Missing in Action franchise.
The film also stars Soon-Tek Oh (Col. Yin), Steven Williams (Nestor), Cosie Costa (Lt. Mazilli), David Chung (Dou Chou), John Wesley (Sgt. Franklin), Christopher Cary (Emerson), Bennett Ohta (Capt. Ho), Joe Michael Terry (Cpl. Opelka), and Professor Toru “Sub Zero” Tanaka (Lao).
The film opens in 1972 Vietnam where Col. Braddock (Norris) leads a rescue mission along the Cambodian border. A squad of American troops are pinned downed by enemy fire when Braddock and a rescue team land in a chopper to ferry them out. As they take off under heavy fire, a rocket round takes out the hydraulics and the chopper goes down. All the men on board are soon listed M.I.A. ‘Missing in Action’ and become a painful reminder of America’s failure to win the Vietnam War.
The film then flashes forward ten or so years later where Braddock and his men are prisoners in a camp run by the sadistic Col. Yin (Soon-Tek Oh) who forces Braddock’s men and others to grow opium for a French drug smuggler named Francois (Pierre Issot). Yin has spent years trying to break Braddock and make him confess to ridiculous war crimes. Yin also uses psychological torture against the prisoners by telling them that American ambassadors are being killed throughout the world, and that world opinion has turned against the United States because if its long war against the peace loving people of Vietnam.
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