Time to Hunt (2020)

Time to Hunt (2020)
Original Title: 사냥의 시간
Translation: Time of the Hunt

 

Starring: Lee Je-hoon, Ahn Jae-hong, Choi Woo-sik, Park Jeong-min, Park Hae-soo
Director: Yoon Sung-hyun
Action Director: Choe Bong-rok

Another day, another South Korean film that runs in excess of 130-minutes.

What we have here is something of a heist/cat-and-mouse action thriller set in a pre-apocalyptic South Korea, not too unlike the Japan that we see in Blood Heat. Like that movie, the problem is mainly driven by a failing economy as opposed to nuclear weapons, viruses, or zombies. In the context of Time to Hunt, South Korea has defaulted on its International Monetary Fund loans, which I assume the country tried to pay off by printing out of outrageous sums of won. As with Germany following WW2, the result is hyper-inflation that is driving people into the streets to protest, pushing the government into police state status. And since the won is largely useless now, there has been no foreign investment, causing the industrial sector to go belly up. Now, the government is trying to stabilize currency by prohibiting the exchange of won for dollars, although some entities still have their stockpiles (i.e. banks, clandestine casinos, etc.).

It is in this setting that we meet our main characters. Ki-hoon (Choi Woo-sik, of Parasite and Train to Busan) and his slow-witted partner Jang-ho (Ahn Jae-hong, of “Kingdom”), are a couple of street hustlers who are eking out an existence in Seoul. They are living off the proceeds from a big job they committed three years ago, but money is running out fast. And they have a criminal record, so if employment is sparse for regular people, imagine what it’d be for people with shady pasts. When we meet them, they heading over to the local prison to pick up their best friend, Jun-seok (Lee Je-hoon, of Phantom Detective and “Secret Door”). Jun-seok took the fall for them during that aforementioned job and is finally being released.

Upon discovering that their money is worth nothing and that their dollar stash is running dangerously low, Jun-seok makes a proposal: perform a final job to get them enough money to get the hell out of South Korea and emigrate to Taiwan, where things are still peachy keen, economy-wise (one assumes that Xi Jinping died of a “heart attack” before reunification plans could commence). He suggests that they bust into a clandestine casino, where a former fourth member of their team, Sang-soo (Park Jeong-min, of Fists of Legend and Deliver Us from Evil), works as a waiter. Sang-soo owes an outrageous sum to Jun-seok, who is willing to forgive the debt if he gets in on the job.

The four ne’er-do-wells meticulously plan out the heist and visit an ex-con friend of Jun-seok to get themselves some powerful weaponry that will really intimidate the establishment’s security guards. The heist goes as planned for the most part, right down to Jang-ho remembering to steal the hard drives with all the CCTV footage so that they won’t be able to find out who was responsible. However, there is a slight snag to that bit of forethought and insight: the CCTV footage on those hard drives also has all the footage of VIPs and police higher-ups visiting the casino. Without them, there’s no material with which to blackmail the “good guys” whenever they need a favor or two. So, the casino owners—who remain faceless throughout the film—hire a methodical killer named Han (Park Hae-soo, of “Squid Game” and Yaksha: Ruthless Operations) to retrieve the hard drives and “tie up all the loose ends.” Our heroes may be well-armed, but they are certainly not prepared the ordeal awaiting them…

There are two questions to be asked about a film like Time to Hunt upon reaching its conclusion. The first one is “Does the dystopian setting contribute meaningfully to the movie in any way?” The answer is “Sorta.” I mean, it does provide our characters with a surplus of abandoned buildings to hide out in throughout the running time. It goes some way to explain why our characters are financially screwed early on, but honestly, that could’ve been treated via other narrative details without having to set the movie in the near-future. I guess it was needed as a way to give the film an oppressive atmosphere suitable for the oppressive atmosphere of our antiheroes’ plight, but the background details of South Korea’s economic collapse don’t contribute much to the story itself.

The other question is whether or not the film deserves its 134-minute running time. The answer to that is “Not quite.” I’m pretty sure you could have edited out the third-act subplot involving the brother of the arms dealer and not lost anything at all. This is especially because that character (and his cronies) show up briefly when they are introduced, and then get to fire a bunch of guns at the villainous Han at the climax. They really do not add anything to the narrative that could’ve been relegated to Jun-seok and his cohorts. There are probably a handful of scenes that could have been trimmed down by a few seconds here and there that would have contributed to the narrative being a lot tighter without losing much in the overall story.

Where Time to Hunt shines, and this is mainly thanks to writer-director-editor Yoon Sung-hyun and cinematographer Lim Won-guen (who was nominated for an award for this), is a combination of the visuals and tension generated by them. Connoisseurs of martial arts cinema like me often complain about bad lighting in movies whenever it obscures the action scenes. There is a lot of darkness in this film, but it is shot artfully in that every shadow becomes a reason to generate suspense and tension. Just watch the sequence in the parking garage—or the previous scene at the bar—and you’ll see just how scary an ill-lit location can be. Lim also likes to soak scenes in red filters, almost like some of the more beautiful sequences in Dario Argento’s Suspiria, but contrast the Gothic architecture of Argento’s films with the rundown, post-industrial age jungle of this film. Yoon Sung-hyun also writes Han to be such an intimidating villain that he’s just as frightening to us the viewer as he is to viewer, even when he’s not on screen.

Speaking of writing, one of the other strengths of the film is the characters. They are not especially deep, but their camaraderie is palpable throughout. Jung-seok is a hardened criminal, but he is faithful to his friends, even when he finds out that the money they stole that put him in prison in the first place is no longer around. He truly cares about his friends, even Sang-soo, whom he was initially angry at for stiffing him on owed money. Jung-seok is often willing to lie in order to protect his friends, especially the not-particular-smart Jang-ho. Both Jung-seok and Ki-hoon are especially sympathetic in terms of their patience for their friend, in spite of his intellectual shortcomings. That sort of loyalty makes these characters sympathetic, despite their skirting about the law when it comes to their actions.

The most unexpected aspect of this film is the ending. I won’t spoil it, but it doesn’t really the end the way you might expect it to. It does, however, make sense within the framework of the narrative. It is ambiguous enough to suggest a sequel, but even if it never gets one, it’s fun to use your imagination to think about what will happen.  Time to Hunt is not an action extravaganza, but it is a solid and good-looking (if overlong) thriller that deserves a view.

Steel Rain (2017)

Steel Rain (2017)
Original Title: 강철비
Translation: Steel Rain

 

Starring: Jung Woo-sung, Kwak Do-won, Kim Kap-su, Kim Eui-sung, Lee Kyung-young, Jo Woo-jin, Kim Myung-gon, Park Eun-hye, Won Jin-ah, Lee Jae-yong, Kristen Dalton
Director: Yang Woo-seok
Action Director: Choe Bong-rok

 

My main problem about Korean movies—and bear in mind I’ve seen only a small number of them compared to the Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwanese movies on my list—is that all the ones I want to watch run about 140 minutes on average. That’s…very long. It’s hard to just sit down and watch a Korean movie for fun; I have to guarantee that my movie-watching time isn’t too late and that I’m not too exhausted from staring listlessly at a screen for eight hours in order to do so for another two and a half. Three of the last four Korean movies I’ve seen—this, Time to Hunt, and The Fortress—have all had a run time of 140 minutes. Steel Rain comes the closest to justifying such a length, being one of the best political action-thrillers that has come out of that peninsula since the landmark Shiri (1999).

I think making intelligent political thrillers comes almost naturally to (South) Korean filmmakers, considering their geopolitical situation. Their immediate neighbor is the totalitarian Communist rogue nation we know as North Korea, with whom they have (technically) been at war with for more than 70 years—both countries are technically in a state of cease-fire, as opposed to an outright armistice. They are also located (essentially) right next to China, another authoritarian Communist state with one of the world’s most powerful militaries and largest economies (never mind the current uncertainty, if you believe the videos of David Zhang). With so many enemies at its front and back doors, there is an ever-present danger of sorts to this people, especially considering Kim Jong-un’s (and his psychotic sister’s) belligerent threats of nuclear warfare. It’s that uneasy “peace” between South Korea and its neighbors that serves as great inspiration for political thrillers.

There is a lot of plot in this particular film. The movie begins with a former North Korean agent, Eom Chul-woo (Jung Woo-sung, Musa: The Warrior and The Good, the Bad and the Weird), being brought out of retirement by his former boss, RGB chief Ri Tae-han (Kim Kap-soo, A Tale of Two Sisters). Ri gives him an impossible mission: assassinate two important military officers. Both men are preparing a coup d’état to topple “Number One” (also referred to as “the Supreme Leader” and “the Great General”, but never by the name Kim Jong-un). Unfortunately, they occupy rungs on the ladder higher than General Ri, so he has no way to inform Number One about their plot.

While that is going on, South Korea is just going through elections, with the challenger (Lee Kyun-young, of The Pirates) beating the incumbent (Kim Eu-Sung, from Train to Busan). This is told from the perspective of the Foreign Affairs Secretary, Kwak Chul-woo (Kwak Do-won, of The Wailing and The Man from Nowhere), a genius in his area, but pretty much a failure as a family man. His plastic surgeon wife—this detail will come into play later—has left him and he’s too busy on the phone with politicians to pay attention to his children. However, both countries will come to depend on his know-how and connections to avoid the resurgence of the Korean War.

It starts when Eom Chul-Woo (both protagonists have the same given name) is tasked with killing the head of the Royal Guard, Park Kwang-dong during a visit to a China-financed industrial complex located near the DMZ. Eom hides out in the ventilation system the day before, ready to snipe him at a distance as soon as his car arrives. To his surprise, the visitor is actually Number One, with Park nowhere to be seen. At this point, the rebelling arm of the military fires a pair of stolen American missiles known as “Steel Rain” into the crowd. These weapons are particularly brutal: the warheads split into dozens of cluster bombs, all of which explode and scatter razor-sharp shrapnel all over. Hundreds of civilians—mainly young women who were receiving the Supreme Leader—are hewn down in the explosions. Park then sends his men to the scene of the blast to kill all the survivors, including the Great General, who has been seriously wounded. Comrade Eom leaps into action and trades bullets with the soldiers as he tries to get Number One to safety. He and two young women are able to get the Great General into a delivery truck and head for the South Korean border.

Once in South Korea, Eom stops the truck at the first clinic he sees, which happens to be staffed by an obstetrician. Naturally, she isn’t equipped to deal with this sort of problem but does her best to attend to her prestigious patient: she closes up one wound, removes shrapnel from another, but is ultimately unable to get the piece of steel lodged in his head. While waiting for General Ri to send reinforcements, Eom comes face to face with a bunch of assassins working for Park. After a pitched fight between Eom and the killers, he, the girls, the doctor and the Supreme Leader have to flee. The doctor leads them to another clinic, which happens to be run by Kwak’s ex-wife. Once news of the bloodbath at the obstetrician’s clinic reaches Kwak’s ears, he finds out that his ex was the last person this doctor contacted. It’s time for him to have a first meeting with Eom. But both men will soon learn that the coup d’état was about a lot more than a simple transfer of power. It promises to change the entire face of geopolitics in East Asia forever…

Steel Rain is not in any way a casual movie to watch, at least not the first times. It is a complex and involved political thriller populated with LOTS of characters, most of whom are well developed and realistic, trying to deal with potentially world-changing developments. There only a few moments of levity where the film gives itself a moment to breathe, and even those help make both protagonists more relatable. Those are funny in subtle ways, with two men from rival countries enjoying a nice meal and bitching about G-Dragon. Kwak treats the events going on around him with a casual sense of humor, which irritates Eom to no end, but the man is mainly hiding his own anxiety. That said, he is still the best person in all of South Korea to deal with the escalating tension between the two sibling nations, between his natural intellect, foreign connections, and impeccable academic understanding of local history. Eom initially can’t see it, but eventually the two develop a bond, which is believable because the film gives them the appropriate amount of screen time to interact, while letting both men see the other action.

Although the film is deadly serious in terms of the implications of its story, there are some moments of dark humor running through course of the story. This really comes to the fore when we meet the two girls who unwittingly accompany Eom Chul-woo to South Korea. As one might expect from a totalitarian state where the leader is presented as a deity to its citizens, they react with the sort of fangirl enthusiasm to the mere presence of Number One that an American may reserve for Taylor Swift, but never for a politician. This is especially amusing when you get to the blood transfusion sequence. Also, when you consider the backward lifestyle of the average North Korean citizen, where starvation appears to be a constant threat and concern, their reaction to microwave food is priceless. And realistically, all the female characters gradually disappear from the narrative, not because of any writing error, but because there comes a point a point in a political crisis where there is no plausible reason for a civilian to hang around the political bigwigs doing their thing. Most Hollywood action movies keep the leading lady around because the hero needs someone to fall for, but this film has no room for it’s-in-the-script romance.

There is the question of whether or not the film earns its 140-minute running time. For the most part, it does. On one hand, you could probably edit out the lulls in which the two Chul-woo’s are bonding over South Korean culture. That would probably shave off almost a half-hour of the running time, keep the tension constant, and not affect the main plot at all. But if you did that, then you’d miss a bit of the richer character moments that make you root for these men so much.

There are a handful of action sequences, including the attack on the factory complex, a fight sequence at the clinic, and a final assault on the hospital. The set pieces were staged by Choe Bong-rok, who appears to be a veteran to action since the South Korean cinematic renaissance in 1999. He has acted in films like Crying Fist and Fists of Legend. He also did stuntwork in The Villainess and I Saw the Devil. More importantly, he has worked on the action in movies like Time to Hunt; The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale; and other, plus “Other Crew” credits on City of Violence and The Restless. There are two fight sequences, which resemble the realistic “Special Forces” approach to screen fighting that we’ve seen in movies since The Bourne Identity, but are portrayed here without all of the quick cuts and rapid-fire editing that the other series is known for. The fights are perfectly visible and staged with quickness and gusto. Eom Chul-woo is just as deadly with a scapel as he is with a semi-automatic handgun. The big shootout in the hospital is reminiscent of the one in Hard Boiled, although the N. Korean killers are far deadlier than Anthony Wong’s cannon-fodder cronies in that film. You watch these movies with North Korean agents kicking all sorts of capitalist ass and you wonder what that country would be like if the Kim Dynasty spent the same amount of effort in feeding their people that they spend in training agents and assassins—and that is even brought up by one of the characters. I should watch more of these South Korean political action films because, between this and Shiri, they really know what they’re doing.

 

 

Braddock: Mission in Action III (1988)

Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Aki Aleong, Roland Harrah III, Miki Kim, Yehuda Efroni, Ron Barker, Floyd Levine, Jack Rader
Director: Aaron Norris
Action Director: Rick Prieto, Gil Arceo, Renato Morado

 

Having finished up the arc of James Braddock within the span of two movies, there is the question of what to do with him in order to keep making money. After all, there was still some money to be made from the one-man army approach to action filmmaking. Rambo and Platoon rip offs were still a thing as Hollywood entered the final years of the Reagan administration. And then there was Predator, which proved that Arnold Schwarzenegger could do the make bathe the film reels in pure testosterone and still put butts in seats.

Making a third Missing in Action film was not originally on the books. It came about after Chuck and Aaron Norris had a read an article about the plight of Amerasian children in Vietnam. The idea of American serviceman fathering children with the local Asian women has been around since the Spanish-American War, when the Philippines became one of the first American “colonies.” It has happened in Japan, South Korean, and Taiwan. During the Vietnam War, American soldiers sewed their wild oats all over Southeast Asian, especially Vietnam and Thailand. Although the official numbers were once declared to be about 1000, the numbers fell between 20,000 and 30,000 children between American soldiers and Vietnamese women.

The problem with fathering children with the locals—and not marrying the mothers and bringing them home—is that if your side loses the war, those children are not going to be well-liked by the new leadership. The government will probably see the mother as a sort of “race traitor” and the scion as an aberration of sorts. That sort of discrimination is even more likely if the father happens to be black: let’s be honest, a lot of East and Southeast Asian cultures have traditionally placed greater value on paler skin. This sort of gets some lip service in one scene in this film.

There is one little detail about the story that I should mention before I discuss the story: Missing in Action 3 is a complete retcon of the Braddock story arc. Instead of getting captured by enemy forces in 1972, Braddock (still Chuck Norris) is still around come 1975 when Saigon is falling to the insurgents. Instead of an American wife, he is now married to a Vietnamese woman, Lin (Miki Kim), who works as a translator at the American embassy. As the final American helicopters are departing from Saigon, a series of tragedies prevent Braddock from getting his wife out of the country.

First, Lin’s best friend (Pita Liboro) steals her bracelet while the other is packing. Ly gets out of the apartment before her friend does. A couple of minutes later, a mortar destroys the building, with the friend’s body getting completely carbonized in ensuing fire. Braddock arrives in time to see the body getting removed from the rubble. Upon seeing the bracelet, he assumes that it’s his wife. Meanwhile, Lin is making her way to the American embassy, only to trip and fall and get her purse stolen…the purse with her passport inside. With no way to prove her identity, Lin is unable to enter the embassy before chaos erupts and forces the soldiers to withdraw, leaving hundreds of Vietnamese—including Lin--stranded in the country.

Fast forward 12 years. Braddock is hanging out at a bar in Washington D.C. when he receives a visit from a certain Father Polanski (Yehuda Efroni, of Deadly Outbreak and Delta Force). Polanski runs a mission in Vietnam that houses orphaned Amerasian children. He has recently come into contact with a young boy named Van, whose mother is named Lin…Lin Braddock. Braddock initially dismisses the possibility of his wife being alive, but then changes his mind once the CIA, led by Agent Littlejohn (Jack Rader, of Outbreak and The Blob ’88), shows up to tell him that Father Polanski’s is a load of hogwash. I find it interesting that even in 1988, one’s first inclination of hearing something from the CIA was to assume that the opposite is true. So, Braddock takes the first plane to Bangkok, with arrangements to take a civilian plane into Vietnam. The CIA tries to stop him, but this is Chuck Norris we’re talking about. He beats the hell out of the agents following him and makes his way back into ‘Nam.

It doesn’t take Braddock long to find Father Polanski’s mission. Polanski leads him to the shack where Lin and her son, Van (Roland Harrah III, who tragically died at the age of 21), are living. After a tearful reunion, Braddock tells Lin and Van that they need to get out of dodge as quick as possible. While waiting for Braddock to get his speak stealth boat ready, the Vietnamese army shows up to stop them. Their leader, the sadistic General Quoc (Aki Aleong, of The Quest and Sci-Fighter), murders Lin on the spot and takes Braddock and Van into custody. Of course, “custody” means “torture” and this one is a doozy: Braddock has his hands tied up, which are also tied a cord that is rigged to a shotgun aimed at Van (who is strapped to a chair). As long as Braddock stays on the balls of his feet, his son will be fine. But if he relaxes his feet, it will pull the cord and KA-BLAM! Oh, and Genral Quoc also electrocutes Braddock with jumper cables just to make things interesting.

Braddock eventually escapes because…well…this is Chuck Norris we’re talking about. His son goes to the mission to hide, but is found out by General Quoc and his men. Quoc then rounds up all the Amerasian kids and imprisons them. Braddock now has a new mission: save his son and get all the children out of Vietnam to safety. This time, we win!

Braddock: Missing in Action 3 is considered by Norris himself to be the best in the trilogy. I’m inclined to agree. The film is a lot more polished than the first two and Aaron Norris gives the film a more professional look than the earlier movies. He does a better job of convincing us that the Philippines are Vietnam than the earlier movies. Although Canon was swiftly approaching bankruptcy by the time it came out, had more money to spend when production began in 1986—the same year they made Invaders from Mars and Lifeforce. The failure of that last film helped put them on the road to financial ruin. The early scenes in Saigon have an appropriate sense of scale and probably cost more to stage than the other two films combined. It also benefits from better pacing, more martial arts, and a final act that has more emotional investment, considering that children’s lives are now at stake.

With a higher budget, there is more and better action than the previous two installments in the series. The last half hour or so is one long series of set pieces, starting with Braddock’s raid on a prison camp. In one exploitive scene, a soldier tries to rape a teenage girl. Braddock shows up, kicks him around a little, and then rams a grenade launcher into his gut. Firing the weapon, the force of the grenade carries the guy through the wall and leaves a bloody hole in his stomach, after which it explodes. That is followed by an extended truck-helicopter chase through a forest of palm trees. It all leads to a final showdown at the Vietnam-Thai border, which goes into Rambo territory when General Quoc shows up in a Russian Mil Mi-24 attack chopper.

The (relatively) plentiful fight sequences were staged by Rick Prieto, a member of Chuck Norris’s stunt team. He also did fight choreography for The Hero and the Terror and the second Delta Force movie. Although there are no stand-out classics, every time Chuck has to take down some Vietnamese soldiers in close-quarters combat, he performs his usual kicks with great aplomb. He also does some nice leg locks and scissor takedowns in a couple of his fights. With more fighting than the other two movies, plus better explosions, the film was much more satisfying on the action front. This is sort of mindless one-man-army madness that The Expendables wad made to pay tribute to.

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, Soon-Tek Oh, Steven Williams, Bennett Ohta, Cosie Costa, Joe Michael Terry, John Wesley, David Chung, Professor Toru Tanaka
Director: Lance Hool
Action Director: Aaron Norris

 

Filmed back-to-back with the first Missing in Action, this was originally supposed to the first movie in the series. However, the producers came to the conclusion that the “sequel” was better than the first movie and released it first. This film was released the following year as a prequel, telling us the story of how Col. James Braddock got captured by the Vietnamese and gained his reputation in Vietnam as a war criminal. Their hunch was correct: Missing in Action was a mammoth success and this one, while modestly profitable, probably worked better as a follow-up.

The film is set in Vietnam (played by the Philippines) during the latter days of the war. Col. James Braddock (Chuck Norris) leads a helicopter into enemy territory to pick up a platoon under heavy fire from Charlie—or the North Vietnamese (the film isn’t exactly clear). The helicopter is damaged by gunfire, forcing Braddock and the other soldiers to bail over a lake. They are subsequently captured and thrown into a prison camp.

Braddock’s fellow prisoners include Nester (Steven Williams, best known for Jason Goes to Hell and the “It” TV movie), Mazili (Cosie Costa, of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins and Survival Run), Opelka (Joe Michael Terry), and Franklin (the late John Wesley, of “Superhuman Samurai Cyber Squad”). There’s another soldier (probably John Otrin) who tries to escape early on. He makes it as far as rope bridge across a waterfall before he meets his end at the hands of a guard armed with a flame-thrower. It doesn’t take long for Nester to go turncoat, convinced by the evil General Yin (Soon-Tek Oh, of The President’s Man and Beverly Hills Ninja) that Uncle Sam has forgotten them.

As Braddock is the highest-ranking officer among the prisoners, General Yin makes him an offer: sign a declaration of guilt for war crimes and he’ll let him and the others go. Braddock holds out, confident that someone will come to rescue him. General Yin can’t have any of that, so he begins a campaign of torture—both psychological and physical—against Braddock and the others in hopes of breaking down their spirits. If hard labor under the hot tropical sun isn’t bad enough, Franklin catches malaria and Yin refuses to treat him. Yin also does dastardly things like burn letters from Braddock’s wife and undress the prisoners in front of hookers so they (the hookers) can laugh at them. The torture scene most people will remember is when Braddock is hung upside down and then has his head placed in a burlap sack together with a hungry swamp rat.

The turning point comes in the form of Franklin’s malaria. It gets so bad that Braddock has no choice but to sign the declaration in exchange for medicine. But then General Yin goes back on his word: he injects Franklin with poison and has him immolated in front of the prisoners. Now, all bets are off the table. Braddock escapes the camp and wages a campaign of guerilla warfare against his enemies. This time, we win!

Missing in Action 2 is a decent prequel to the first movie, although it’s no Deer Hunter. The film is divided into two halves: the initial ordeal at the prison camp and then Braddock’s subsequent one-man army sequence. I suppose the first few scenes can serve as a sort of truncated first act. Chuck Norris is his usual self: a bit wooden, but he gets the job done. He’s been worse in other films. The film does one-up the first film in that it has a consistent villain throughout, instead of killing both main villains before the big action sequences. The film’s low budget is apparent, mainly in arming the North Vietnamese with American M-16s and Israeli UZIs, as opposed to Russian AK-47s. That little detail made me lift an eyebrow—I’m guessing that got whatever the local armorer (probably the same guy who worked for Cirio Santiago)—had on hand. But it still manages to end on some nice, big explosions.

The action was staged by Chuck’s brother, Aaron, as is par for the course for his films. People looking for Chuck’s martial arts will mainly have to wait for the final showdown between Braddock and General Yin, which is surprisingly well choreographed. Chuck does his usual solid tang soo do kicking, plus the two share some nice-looking (by 80s Hollywood standards) exchanges of punches and blocks. The gunplay is pretty standard stuff for that era: fire a machine gun (or assault rifle) in the bad guys’ direction and several stuntmen (including Jeff Yamada) fall over. Sadly, the imposing Professor Toru Tanaka, who had fought Chuck a few years earlier in Eye for an Eye, doesn’t square off with Norris a second time. He just gets shot to death. Boring!

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning doesn’t quite match the level of spectacle as the first film, even though it probably has a lot more heart. Thankfully, the next film in the series would manage to one-up both films in both departments. Unfortunately, audiences seemed to be growing bored with the standard one-man army model by then.

Missing in Action (1984)

Missing in Action (1984)

 

Starring: Chuck Norris, M. Emmet Walsh, Lenore Kasdorf, James Hong, David Tress, Ernie Ortega
Director: Joseph Zito
Action Director: Aaron Norris

 

I find it interesting that this film was dismissed by critics as a “preemptive rip-off” of Rambo. I mean, can you “rip off” something that hasn’t even come out yet? I suppose you can cash in on the hype, but does that make it a rip-off or a clone? I’ll leave that question for the philosophers. In any case, Missing in Action was made in between the releases of First Blood (1982) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). Moreover, Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan of Canon Pictures got both this and the prequel into theaters before the second Rambo film did. And apparently, Golan and Globus had access to the original screenplay for First Blood Part II as written by James Cameron—Cameron has distanced himself from the project, despite getting screenplay credit in the final film.

In any case, Missing Action is quite possibly the first “one-man army” film that was popular during the 1980s and was homage’d 30 years later in the Expendables films. It is not the first action film about going back to Vietnam; the ensemble action-drama Uncommon Valor—considered one of the better ‘Nam films from the 1980s—had come out the year before and was reasonably successful. Missing in Action was made with an especially lean budget of three million dollars and was a resounding success, bringing in about 52 million dollars at the box office. It also marked Chuck Norris’s transition from your basic “karate actor” to “generic action star.”

We open with a bunch of soldiers, led by Colonel James Braddock (Norris), fleeing through the jungles of Vietnam while pursued by “Charlie”. Once they reach the extraction point, they are set upon on all sides, from mortar shells to machine gun fire. After watching his friends get shot and bayonetted to death by the Viet Cong, Braddock goes nuts and lunges at “Charlie” with a pair of live grenades. Cue Braddock waking up from a nightmare caused by his battle fatigue post-traumatic stress disorder.

What we learn about Braddock is that he had been captured and held as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam for about a decade before escaping on his own. At this time there are talks between American politicians, personified by Senator Maxwell Porter (David Tress), and Vietnamese leaders about the existence of MIAs still being held in Vietnam. Porter has reached out to Braddock numerous times to accompany him to Vietnam to testify that yes, there are likely more POWs and MIAs that need to be recognized and released. Braddock eventually agrees and goes to Vietnam with Senator Porter and Ann Fitzgerald (Lenore Kasdorf, of Amityville Dollhouse and L.A. Bounty), who works for the State Department.

It doesn’t take Braddock more than a few minutes after setting foot in Vietnam to start kicking up dust. First, he disrespects General Tran (James Hong, of The Perfect Weapon and Bloodsport 2) to his face by refusing to shake his hand. He then calls Tran an asshole at a public hearing about the existence of MIAs in Vietnam. That last part begs some explanation. You see, apparently while he was imprisoned in ‘Nam, he was forced to sign a confession of war crimes by his captors. And when Tran brings up that document at the meeting, that was the last straw for Braddock. A man who has been through as much as he has can only watch his leaders kiss another country’s butt in exchange for lies for so long before he snaps. Also, it should be noted that the second to last straw was seeing one of his captors, Vinh (Filipino actor Ernie Ortega, of Return of the Kickfighter and Deadly Target), among the higher-ups of these meetings.

This is where Braddock starts his one-man campaign for post-war justice. First, he sneaks out of his hotel and makes his way across Saigon to General Tran’s mansion. Once there, he forces General Tran at knifepoint to reveal to him the location of a prison camp. He also kills the General, but that’s only because the guy tried to shoot him afterward. Armed with this information, he leaves Vietnam—almost getting caught by the authorities at one point—and goes into Thailand. There, he meets up with Jack Tucker (M. Emmet Walsh, of Blade Runner and Blood Simple), an American smuggler who specializes in bringing contraband (i.e. beer, cigarettes) into Vietnam. He convinces Tucker and several of his contacts to supply him with guns, explosives, boats and even helicopter support in order to go back into ‘Nam and find the POW camp. What Braddock doesn’t know is that General Vinh and his men are keeping a close eye on his activities. But this is Chuck Norris we’re talking about: This time, we win!

An aside: I’m pretty sure that one cannot find a Hollywood film set in Thailand that does not bring up the country’s reputation as a haven for sex tourism. Missing in Action is no exception. In one scene, Braddock enters a bar to get information as to the whereabouts of Mr. Tucker. As soon he gets his info and leaves, we see some random naked chick lifted onto the counter by a bar patron. Uh, okay. Braddock then goes to a brothel-cum-nightclub (har!) to find Tucker, in which the entertainment is a (clothed) woman singing while all the other women on stage are dancing completely naked. Finally, when Braddock is ready to carry out his mission, he finds Tucker in bed with two Asian girls (whom I assume are Filipino girls pretending to be Thai).

Enjoying Missing in Action requires some adjustment of one’s expectations. First of all, people expecting Norris and his infamous Roundhouse Kick to be a big part of the action will no doubt come away disappointed. There are some brief martial arts against a Vietnamese agent in Braddock’s hotel room near the hour mark, but that’s about it. And the one-man army shenanigans don’t really begin until the final half hour. The movie was made on a budget, and although you could do this sort of thing in the Philippines for far cheaper than you could in the States, Canon was still working with a limited budget at this point. That said, the film is divided neatly into three coherent acts: 1) Braddock’s return to Vietnam and discovery of another prisoner camp; 2) Braddock’s trip to Thailand to prepare himself for his own personal mission; and 3) the mission itself.

The mission itself, staged mainly by Aaron Norris and his team (including a pre-fame Jean-Claude Van Damme), is okay. I’m sure that the concept of “Bullet Ballet” and “Gun-Fu” and stuff like that was completely foreign in Hollywood in 1984. It technically hadn’t been invented in Hong Kong at that point, although they were going in that direction with films like The Long Arm of the Law. What I mean with all of this is that the action is very much of the style of “people shoot machine guns in each other’s direction for several minutes without hitting anything until the script says that someone has to fall over and die.” Oh sure, you get to Chuck Norris mowing down people with M60 machine guns and M-16s, but there is no “art” to the staging. Nor is the action particularly bloody, despite the R rating. Then again, this was more than a decade before Saving Private Ryan sent the message to studios that all war battle scenes had to show people getting completely eviscerated by bullet wounds, because that’s realistic. There are some neat pyrotechnics when Braddock destroys the prison camp with C4 plastic explosives, though. Moreover, dividing the climax into three sections—blowing up the camp, attacking the prisoner convoy, and the final part on the river with the boats—guarantees that the action doesn’t get too repetitive.

In the end, Missing in Action is pretty decent popcorn entertainment. Chuck Norris turns in one of his better performances as a man haunted by the memories of the Hell of War (and Imprisonment) who is just about to explode at any moment. The action isn’t bad, although subsequent movies of this ilk would do it better. But as an early example of the “art form,” it is worth a look.

The Violence Action (2022)

The Violence Action (2022)
Orginal Title: バイオレンスアクション
Translation: Violent Action

 

Starring: Kanna Hashimoto, Yôsuke Sugino, Fumika Baba, Win Morisaki, Oji Suzuka, Shunsuke Daitô, Yûri Ota, Jirô Satô, Yu Shirota, Katsunori Takahashi, Takashi Okamura
Director: Tôichirô Rutô
Action Director: n/a

 

The Violence Action is an adaptation of a relatively recent manga by Renji Asai (“The Boy and the Beast”) and Shina Sawada. Knowing its manga origins will go a long way to explain some of the film’s “interesting” visual tics, especially during the action sequences. It also goes a certain way toward explaining the way the whole modern argument of “how can such a petite girl take down guys so much bigger than her.” Not to mention the color scheme. And the film’s distorted sense of reality. And, well, everything else in it.

Kei Kikuno (Kanna Hashimoto, of Kingdom and Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Graduation) is a diminutive—I don’t think she tops five feet—and super kawaii college-age Japanese girl. She currently studies bookkeeping (or accounting?) in college and has an after school job to make ends meet. That job purports to be an escort service—in the way that is so Japanese, it’s called a “Natural and Supple Delivery Service”—but is actually a front for killer-for-hire service. In the first scene, we see Kei storming the room of a love motel to rescue a kidnapped Internet influencer from a gang of sleazebags, all of whom she murders without breaking a sweat.

What we learn about Kei’s job is that she has an assistant-cum-getaway driver named Zura (Takashi Okamura, best known around these parts for No Problem 2 with Yuen Biao). His defining trait, besides being a bit of a goof, is that he covers up his balding head with an armor-plated Elvis-pompadour helmet-wig. Yeah, you read that right. Their base of operations is small ramen shop run by a lady named Tencho (Fumiko Baba, of the “Kamen Rider Drive” series). The running joke is that the ramen house is for “club membership only,” and that Tencho is an awful cook.

Kei’s next mission will be the driving force of the plot, but let’s get a bit of background. The Denma-Gumi Clan of Yakuza is about to go through some rough times. The current head, Sandaime (prolific actor Jiro Sato, of Yakuza-Busting Girls: Final Death-Ride Battle), is about to be incarcerated for the usual racketeering rigmarole associated with organized crime. So, someone has to lead the family while he’s serving the time. The two most experienced men in the Clan are Kenitsu and Kinoshita (Katsunori Takahashi, of Ring and Beyond Outrage). Instead of waiting to see who wins on merit, Kinoshita contacts Kei’s employer to carry out a hit on Kenitsu and his men.

Although the job is successful, news reaches Sandaime that a cute, pink-haired hitgirl killed one of his top lieutenants. Not knowing that his other lieutenant had put her to it, he sends his top assassin, Michitaka-kun (Yu Shirota, of Ajin: Demi Human and New Interpretation Records of the Three Kingdoms), to find and eliminate her. Moreover, the Denma-Gumi bookkeeper, Terano (Yosuke Sugino, of the Tokyo Revengers films), has discovered that Kinoshita has been embezzling money from the organization and hiding it in a secret account. That makes him a target for assassination by Kinoshita, who injures Terano’s friend and bodyguard, Kura (Kenta Izuma), in an attempted assassination. Kei met Terano by chance on the bus some days before and became infatuated with him, but will ultimately be called upon to knock him off the box when he absconds with the clan’s money…

The plot is actually fairly involved, with the different factions of the Yakuza clan fighting for supremacy or trying to eliminate Kei, who’s a disinterested outlier in the whole conflict. There are a handful of subplots included to flesh out the movie to an unnecessarily 111-minute run time. The most important is the nascent puppy love between Kei and Terano. In another one, one of Kei’s associates, Daria (Yuri Ota, of the “Silent Voice” live-action mini-series), wants to get revenge on Kinoshita’s top enforcer. We might also include the unflappable efforts of Michitaka-kun to kill Kei. Finally, early on, Kei’s employer hires a classmate of Kei’s, Watanabe (Oji Suzuka), who carries a torch for Kei. The whole Watanabe subplot mainly exists to give comic foil Zura someone to play off of. Only the Daria subplot feels underdeveloped and (ultimately) predictable in how it will resolve itself.

The Violence Action is very much a quirky movie. I mean, the main heroine is a nigh-unstoppable killing machine who looks like the lead protagonist from the kid’s show “Lazytown,” and is probably just as tall. One of the main villains is an equally-deadly killing machine who dresses in white coveralls and wields a nail gun. There’s Yakuza head who’s defining characteristic is that he loves making stupid dad jokes. Plus, there are moments in the action when Kei moves like The Flash, which pushes the film further from any sort of reality into the realm of live-action cartoon, albeit never reaching City Hunter territory.

I wasn’t able to find the name of the action director on the IMDB credits, nor does the film even have an entry at the JFDB (Japanese Film Database), so I’m not sure who staged the action. It is the expected mix of gunplay, hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting that you expect from most action movies these days. I find it fascinating just how much knife-fighting has become an integral part of action cinema. Back in the day, you might occasionally have sloppily-staged knife fight, or Arnold Schwarzenegger hurling a knife that may actually be a small sword at an attacker, but I get the feeling that more and more martial artists who venture into stuntwork practice more than the usual Shotokan or tae kwon do and incorporate styles like krava maga, escrima and silat into their repertoires, not to mention those who probably study under former Special Forces operatives. When it comes to movies about spies, mercenaries, professional assassins, etc., it almost feels standard for there to be some slick knife fighting on display. The Violence Action is no exception.

The gunplay feels inspired by the works of John Woo and Stephen Tung Wai, but taken to the nth degree. There are lots of “impossible gun tricks,” or, in other words, Kanna Hashimoto firing a pistol while engaged in all manner of wire-assisted acrobatics. That said, these over-the-top gun-fu antics are less about the complex choreography of the shootout as a whole and is treated more like a collage of Hashimoto using a firearm in different airborne positions. I don’t care how unrealistic those stunts are—nor do I care about how much that pistol would snap Kanna’s wrist if she were to fire it one-handed—but I do hope for steak in my bullet ballets and not just the sizzle of some crazy poses to be shooting a gun from.

The hand-to-hand combat is competently staged. Hashimoto does all sorts of joint locks, twists and throws, in addition to the occasional spin kick and wire-assisted aerial boot. She often jumps off the wall to perform a jumping spin kick. As the number of “girl-boss action flix” has increased over the past decade, so has the corresponding rhetoric among male viewers of “no way could a girl that size take on all these men all by herself.” I’m sure that HK cinephiles worry less about that, having grown up on a steady diet of Angela Mao, Polly Shang-Kuan, Michelle Yeoh, Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. In any case, Hashimoto is so small, even compared to ScarJo, Jessica Chastain, and Karen Gillan, that watching her fight anyone will require massive suspension of disbelief. I’m willing to grant her that suspension to a degree, but not all viewers will. But then again, this is based on manga, so reality is a more of a suggestion than something to be followed.

I think you can have some fun with The Violence Action. Kanna Hashimoto is not hawt, but she is kawaii and sometimes fun to watch. Much of the humor is too goofy to be truly fun, but the film never feels exactly slow. The action is hit or miss, but those of us who like butt-kicking women can enjoy a single viewing of it.