Posted: 02/12/2011

Braddock: Missing in Action III Review

by Robert Baum

Review: Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988)

Can anyone recall any mention of Colonel James Braddock having had a romantic liaison with a Vietnamese woman in either Missing in Action (1984) or the prequel Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985). Maybe there might have been such footage left on the cutting room floor. Well it’s probably little more than a way for Cannon to exploit the many news stories of servicemen who sired children in Vietnam and leaving them fatherless upon being slain in battle or returning stateside without their offspring. Maybe there is just cause to be cynical in the case of Braddock: Missing in Action III which not only stars the wooden thespian Chuck Norris but has a screenplay co-written by him and his brother Aaron is director.
The film opens in 1975 where Braddock is waiting for his Vietnamese wife (Miki Kim) amid the tumult of citizens storming the gates of the American Embassy in Saigon. Braddock escapes but without the wife as she is believed to be among the casualties. Does this mean we are to ignore the first and second films? Apparently Chuck has as he co-wrote the screenplay.
One night stateside several years later Braddock meets a priest (Yehuda Efroni, one of the airline hostages in another Cannon effort, The Delta Force) in a bar—this isn’t a joke. The former serviceman is told that his Vietnamese wife is alive and has a son. Initially Braddock is disbelieving of the man of the cloth but decides to go back to Vietnam. As his friends are wise enough to not accompany him, other than providing transport, as they know in all likelihood that Chuck will be back home—or at the very least, in the next sequel—but the same might not be true of an ally. As the case is (or was) with M. Emmet Walsh in the first film.
In Vietnam, Chuck finds his wife and the son (Roland Harrah III) he has sired who is resentful of the man who never before knew that he had a son. The reunion/ introduction is interrupted by the arrival of the enemy who are lead by the sinister General Quoc (Aki Aleong of the recent Cannon release The Hanoi Hilton). Braddock’s wife is slain and the supersoldier and son are imprisoned by the sadist of a soldier. The general particularly delights in putting Braddock through the sort of torture endured by Mel Gibson in last year’s Lethal Weapon.
Braddock does manage to escape and win the trust of his son, which is reminiscent of the relationship arm-wrestling trucker Sylvester Stallone had with his cinematic offspring last year in another Cannon production—and directed by Cannon’s big gun Menahem Golan—Over the Top. This film looks like it cost less than the record-breaking $12,000,000 salary Sly earned for the second of his two films with Cannon (the first was the 1986 release Cobra).
Why after all these years is there another Missing in Action film? Is it more than the many accounts of Amerasians that have died or have been living in squalor for all these years? Well given the success of the first two Braddock adventures, though much of the gates were chiefly generated by the foreign markets, video rentals, and the like. Hmmm, death, taxes, and another Missing in Action film? Sitting through just about any Norris film is torture enough and the third time is not the charm here.

Robert Baum is Currently a Bryn Mawr, PA-based film afficanado and pop culture junkie.

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