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.