BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III - Ground Chuck

Cannon Films, the best studio in the eighties with the ability to latch onto a fad and turn it into a big dumb movie with loads of explosions. If it wasn&#146t Ninja, it was terrorist commies, or it was rewriting history so America Wins the Vietnam War This Time. Which is what we get here in the latest exploding-bamboo classic from the producers Golan and Globus.

Ok, remember the original Missing in Action, where Chuck had been captured and held by Charlie for ten years? All those moments of torture and mental abuse? Remember the six pack of ass whupping that Chuck delivered on the Cong? All that stuff - forget it. Missing in Action III takes place in a parallel world where Chuck wasn&#146t captured and tortured and raped and humiliated for ten years, got loose and blew up a bunch of bad guys along the way.

No, here we open in the fall of Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, or whatever the hell they're calling it these days), as the North Vietnamese come pouring southward. As the US Embassy evacuation continues via chopper, Chuck gets separated from his Vietnamese wife, who then gets promptly turned into a charcoal briquette - or so Chuck assumes because the dead woman was wearing his wife's ivory bracelet. So chuck evacuates while the little woman gets left behind in the chaos.

Unfortunately, Chuck was married to a woman so amazingly stupid that she doesn&#146t know how to work a telephone. And so for the past ten years or so all she does all day is sit around in her Vietnamese hovel with her son and pray that Chuck comes back to save them.

And so one day, a Catholic priest who runs an orphanage full of children left behind by GI Joe finds Mrs. James Braddock and thinks the encounter rather odd. Unfortunately he doesn&#146t know how to use a telephone either and makes the journey to the United States to find Chuck and tell him of his missing wife's plight.

The CIA promptly tells Chuck to mind his own business, which proves that of course the story is on the up and up. And if you don&#146t know what happens next, clearly you've never seen a Chuck Norris movie. Chuck borrows a sporty little speedboat from Q-Branch, jets back to the rice paddies and starts kicking a little VC butt. Of course in charge of Charlie's army is a General who has it in for the entire flock of little half breed brats left behind by Joe, and pursues chuck and his young charges across half of Vietnam. Much ass kicking ensues.

If you've ever seen an action movie in the eighties, you know what you get here - balls-to-the-wall fighting, non-stop gunplay and kung-fu, the occasional breast, and nothing but pure, distilled action. You also get zero plot, acting that is either completely over-the-top or completely non-existant and a series of highly implausible events that may or may not have any bearing on reality.

We don&#146t get rapid fire cutting like the editor had epilepsy and fell against the A-B roll cutter, we don&#146t get this god-awful "Shaky Action Cam" that has all but destroyed action movies these day (That&#146s right - I'm looking at you, Transformers), we don&#146t get any extended artsy-fartsy music video doubling as a fight. We get raw, straight and undiluted action. In short, they don&#146t make them like this anymore.

BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 2
EXPLOSIONS: 25
ROUNDS FIRED: 4,831
PUNCHES THROWN: 2,273 (and one roundhouse kick)
HANDRAIL DEATHS: 2
CAR CHASES: 3
FRUIT CARTS DESTROYED: 2
NINJA? No
F BOMBS DROPPED: 0
BEST LINE: "I don&#146t step on toes - I step on necks!"
BEST KILL Chuck impales one of the VC guards on his bayonet, and then fires the rocket launcher, blowing Charlie through the hut wall about 400 feet. Seconds later after landing, Charlie explodes, leaving a fine red mist lingering in the air.

THE DVD -
Sadly we get a full frame edition - although not necessarily pan and scan. From my reading, I think that Cannon shot all their films in open-matte format, meaning that they cropped the top and bottom for later release, so I don't think we're losing any picture. The framing doesn't seem tight or cropped like you would normally get in a pan and scan print. Not the most desirable outcome, but it could be worse.

The print used is fair, but not outstanding. There were some scratches here and there, but not anything that would detract too badly. It's not a perfect release, but considering I paid about 3 bucks for it, I don't have a lot of room to complain.

THE EXTRAS -
Sadly, like all the other Chuck Norris releases, all we get is a trailer - and that&#146s it.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
Chuck should have been a bigger action star than he was. He carries himself with elegance and power that easily matches Ah-nold or Sly in their most ripped, muscle bound days. The action is really good, non-stop and really explosive. The story may not be the best ever put down to paper, but why are you going to a Chuck Norris flick from Cannon Films if you're wanting a story?