Missing In Action
The whole, entire “American POWs In Vietnam Must Be Rescued” action movie subgenre is one steeped partly in fact, but it was also done to boost the Reagan era, mostly conservative mindset of the 80s (an era where the distant threat of nuclear war was the worst thing to be concerned with). The tragic truth remains that when the last known Nam POWs were brought home in the early 90s, it was thankfully off camera and off the radar as the returning veterans had deteriorated so much both physically and mentally that several were said to be in an irreversible feral state and most of them didn’t live much longer after returning home. Nonetheless, it still remains a concept for a decent action film and the first template of that type was 1983’s Uncommon Valor followed by this 1984 release starring the ubiquitous Chuck Norris and originally pitched to the producers by Sylvester Stallone in what he would later retool into Rambo 2. The story is solid: Norris is an escaped POW Colonel who makes it back on his own and implores everyone he can that we need to recover our men left behind even if it means additional military force. Labeled as being more of a crusader for a lost cause, Norris decides to accept a diplomatic invite for a special event in Saigon (accompanied by a Senator who constantly kisses up to The Viet Cong brass), using it as a cover to set up a barebones mission into Nam to find the captured men and get them out back home to America. Norris ironically comes off as being the best part of a pretty formula driven flick (especially in the first half), playing his James Braddock as a darkened, brooding figure scarred by his experiences who nonetheless shows amazing efficiency and ingenuity into putting his mad quest together (although it is really any unlucky Congs who happen to run into Chuck that are truly screwed to being served a dark fate), employing an old Army buddy who now resides in Bangkok while acting as an illegal smuggler (M. Emmet Walsh lending the proceedings a ton of credibility just by being his usual self) to use his connections (and his boat) to launch the mostly one man assault on the particular area of Nam that the POW prison camp is stationed at, having beaten the information out of a top Vietnamese general (James Hong, still undefeated as being the Greatest Asian Character Actor Of All Time). Chuck’s stoic, no nonsense attitude justifies his current fan following with their popular set of “facts” about Chuck Norris and what he can and can not do (translation: there’s nothing he can’t) and the nearly unwavering conviction which the viewer has while watching him that he won’t get even a scratch on him. And he doesn’t, effortlessly gliding through the Nam jungle terrain almost as if he grew up there, using a handful of grenades and other props to disable and destroy the first prison camp he finds, only to turn around (after freeing the South Vietnamese non Commie prisoners) and set up an ambush on a military convoy while not wasting a bit of ammo and not missing a single shot. At the end of his mission, he finds his objective in one Erich Anderson, a horror movie actor best known for actively hunting Jason Voorhees in Part 4 of Friday The 13th, only to be felled by Jason in surprisingly record time all while screaming “Oh my God! He’s killing me!”, but thankfully here is only required to simply say, “go home?” after Chuck has slaughtered just about every last bit of the nearby available military. The Cheese smells mighty strong here, but Chuck just can’t be denied, including the legendary iconic moment when he comes out of the water much to the chagrin of three Cong officers who were laughing like hyenas before Chuck uses his weapon to perform some unnecessary surgery on them. The Norris persona was certainly set in stone for all time here and while Norris as a screen figure could do fantastic work with a strong script, it was whenever he was dealing with lesser (but just as popular) material that he could simply become the go to archetype of The Great Action Hero Chuck Norris and it would still have some worthwhile entertainment value as a result…
7/10