Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie Review

It Came from the Eighties

Reviewed by Michael Reuben December 31, 2014

The sequel to Chuck Norris' successful 1984 Rambo ripoff, Missing in Action, was filmed simultaneously and originally meant to be released first, which would have made more sense in dramatic terms. The ceaseless killing spree that Norris' Colonel Braddock unleashes on the enemy in what became the first-released film is the logical payoff to Braddock's own treatment as a POW at the same enemy's hands. But the reliable commercial instincts of Cannon Films' schlock-meisters Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus dictated that a massive body count, sans motivation, would do better at the box office, especially since Rambo: First Blood Part 2 hadn't yet appeared. (Their copycatting was based on an early look at Rambo's script.) The producers' gamble was rewarded with a $6.5 million profit just from the U.S. release of the first MIA. The new frontiers of cable TV and home video provided ancillary revenues for a long time to come.

MIA 2 arrived the following year. Though not as successful as the first film, perhaps because Braddock now had competition from John Rambo himself, the sequel performed well enough to inspire yet a third installment, Braddock: Missing in Action 3 (1988), for which Norris co-wrote the screenplay and hired his brother to direct. MIA 3 flopped and ended the franchise.

MGM, which controls the video rights, has released MIA and MIA 2 both as single Blu-ray discs initially sold only at Wal-Mart and later in a double pack. MIA 2 was not previously reviewed at Blu-ray.com.

The time line is somewhat muddy, but MIA 2 opens in 1972, when America was still engaged in military action in Vietnam, with forces both on the ground and in the air. During an attempted rescue mission, the helicopter commanded by Braddock is shot down over enemy territory, and Braddock and his men barely escape with their lives. The unit under Braddock's command is identified in jagged freeze-frames as "Missing in Action": Captain David Nester (Steven Williams); Master Sergeant Ernest Franklin a/k/a "Frankie" (John Wesley); Corporal Lawrence Opelka (Joe Michael Terry); Lieutenant Anthony Mazilli (Cosie Costa); and, of course, Braddock himself. Captured by the enemy, they will be joined as prisoners by another American POW, Captain Ho (Bennett Ohta).

Years after the official end of hostilities, Braddock and his men remain in a remote camp commanded by the tyrannical North Vietnamese Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh) and his chief henchman, Dou Chou (David Chung). They are the last survivors of a larger group, and Yin keeps them so completely cut off from the outside world that they aren't even sure whether the war is still being fought. Beatings, starvation, withholding of medical care, mock executions and other mental and physical torture are routine.

Captain Nester has become a collaborator, to the disgust of his fellow soldiers. Although Yin treats Nester with contempt, his superior rations and living conditions offer a constant temptation to the others to accede to the enemy colonel's demands. They rely on Braddock's example to maintain their resistance, which is no doubt why Colonel Yin seems fixated on Braddock, whose stoic fortitude he is determined to break. Specifically, Yin wants Braddock to sign a written "confession" admitting to war crimes. Even though Braddock always refuses, Yin concludes every encounter with his signature phrase, "I win!"

Braddock's confession would mean little to Yin except as a trophy, since his interests long ago ceased to be military or political. His real business is smuggling opium, in which his partner is a Frenchman named François (Pierre Issot). François, who also supplies the colonel with weapons and his men with hookers, considers Yin's private stable of POWs a dangerous luxury and urges the colonel to kill them all, but Yin enjoys his sadistic games too much to relinquish the pleasure.

Director Lance Hool, one of the writers of the original MIA, is neither subtle nor stylish, but he understands the basic mechanism of MIA 2, which is the same one that powered Rambo: First Blood Part 2: He prolongs the hero's suffering until both Braddock and the audience can't take any more, then lets Braddock explode on his enemies like a vengeful god. Unfortunately for the film, though, vengeful fury—indeed, any kind of fury—exceeds Chuck Norris' limited range of expression. He can kick, punch, shoot and aim a flamethrower with the best of them, but the harder he tries to emote, the more robotic he seems. James Cameron should have cast Norris as a terminator, because he would have had a distinct advantage over every other actor who has played one, including Arnold Schwarzenegger. Compared to Norris, they all brim with emotion.

After the requisite gunfire, kickboxing and pyrotechnics, and, of course, a final showdown with Yin, Braddock eventually makes it out of the prison camp with most of his company intact. A few of them have to die, because otherwise there wouldn't be any fallen comrades to gnaw at Braddock's conscience and motivate his return to liberate more POWs in the first MIA. Both Rambo and the MIA series were criticized upon release for pandering to the fading hopes of families whose loved ones had never come back from Vietnam by feeding the fantasy of secret POW camps deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia. (Rambo even piled on a conspiracy theory in which the U.S. government knew the locations.)

Thirty years later, however, it is possible to view these films as part of the long process by which American popular culture gradually assimilated a war that had been traumatic both at home and abroad and whose resolution satisfied no one on the American side. The key to the MIA films lies in Colonel Yin's phrase, "I win!", which is a taunting variation on Rambo's question to Colonel Trautman: "Sir, do we get to win this time?" Both Braddock and Rambo get to re-fight a fantasy version of the Vietnam War, in which their cause is made unambiguously righteous by evil foes whose wickedness is beyond dispute—and their victory is total. The films are an exercise in wish-fulfillment that resonated deeply for an audience that was still deeply conflicted over the nation's experience in Vietnam. Rambo and the MIA series may not be as accomplished or complex as, e.g., Coming Home (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986) or Casualties of War (1989), but they films are an essential part of our cultural history. And yes, I just wrote that about a Chuck Norris film.

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

In typical Golan-Globus fashion, MIA 2 was shot wherever costs were lowest, in this case Mexico, where the production company engaged the services of an experienced Mexican cinematographer, Jorge Stahl Jr., who had been making films since the 1940s and delivered less grainy and higher-contrast image than the darker MIA (shot by Brazilian DP João Fernandes). MGM's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray (distributed by Fox) looks quite good for a low-budget project shot on film from this era. The source material is clean, without noticeable damage or wear-and-tear. The image may lack the sharply defined "pop" of a contemporary production that's been tweaked and sharpened on a digital intermediate, but to my eye that makes for a nice change, and it certainly isn't an image that lacks for detail of the jungle surroundings, the squalid POW camp or the grime and sweat on the prisoners' faces and bodies. The colors are very strong, especially the vivid greens of the foliage, the bright yellows and oranges of the pyrotechnics, and the occasional flashes of bright red, which are almost always associated with the North Vietnamese (for reasons that should be obvious). The blacks are good enough to bring out the knee-high boots of which Colonel Yin is so proud, and the film's grain structure appears to be naturally reproduced.

With no extras except a trailer and just a few mono soundtracks, MGM and Fox have been able to devote almost the whole of the BD-25 to the 96-minute film, resulting in an average bitrate just over 27.00 Mbps. That's a good average for this film, and the compression appears to have been performed carefully with no artifacts.

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original mono track has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. It's well-mixed mono with decent dynamic range for sounds such as gunfire, explosions and the distinctively rhythmic rumble of military helicopters. The track won't rattle your listening room, but it supports the story effectively. The score is by Brian May, who scored the original Mad Max and incorporated several cues that fans of George Miller's groundbreaking action series will recognize, either from the first Max or from its reprise at the beginning of The Road Warrior.

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than the film's trailer (480i; 1.85:1, enhanced; 1:35), the disc has no extras.

Missing in Action 2: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Chuck Norris films are big slabs of processed American cheese, and MIA 2 is no exception. But pop culture is popular for a reason, and some movies are like the songs of an era—you hear (or see) them, and they evoke memories and associations with surprising immediacy. Anyone who enjoyed the MIA films in their initial run (or early video release) probably won't be able to resist being transported back to the Eighties, if only for a little while, while watching these Blu-ray releases from MGM and Fox. The technical presentation is certainly acceptable, with MIA 2 being the better of the pair. They aren't great films, but they're a brand of their own.