Chuck Norris is back, dishing out patriotism and heavy sadism in ”Missing in Action 2 – The Beginning,” which opened yesterday at the UA Twin and other theaters. Confused by the chronology? Don’t be. ”Missing in Action,” the first film in the series, told what happened when Colonel Braddock (Mr. Norris), a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner, went back to rescue missing men. Everything went swimmingly: The men were rescued, and the film made money. So, a second installment is here to reveal the details of Braddock’s 1972 escape. If it too does well, we will undoubtedly be seeing a Part 3 covering his high school years.
The new film, like its predecessor, is primitive but shrewd. Its first hour is devoted to ugly and repeated humiliations of Mr. Norris and the supporting cast, so that the last section can present their ferocious assault on their Vietnamese captors. In the first section, for instance, Mr. Norris is hung up by his feet and has his head covered with a burlap bag containing an angry rat. No wonder the rat is angry; this is not his lucky day. Mr. Norris does not lose fights with any opponent, man or rodent.
His chief antagonist in the film is a Vietnamese officer who enjoys torturing the hapless Americans, and who still has starched uniforms and polished boots after a decade in the jungle. (This is only one of the film’s numerous peculiarities; another is that Mr. Norris, supposedly after years on prisoner’s rations, hasn’t lost any weight.) His final bout with this officer provides a karate match that Mr. Norris’s fans ought to relish, although some of them yesterday had a hard time enduring the suspense leading up to this climactic moment.
”Don’t kill him that way!” pleaded one man in the audience, when it appeared that Mr. Norris would merely blow up his enemy with a grenade. This man then went on to make a highly imaginative suggestion. Mr. Norris, imaginative in his own way, proceeded to deliver a series of kicks, punches and strangleholds, dedicating these blows individually to each of his fellow prisoners. The last stroke, and the nastiest, he dedicated to himself.
