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Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988) Against all the odds, the latest in Chuck Norris' cycle of to-the-right-of-Rambo
MIA movies opens with a sequence that sets up the plot with some dodgy
melodramatics but also effectively conveys the chaos of the fall of
Saigon, with hundreds of panicking people besieging the US Embassy and
trying to get on the last chopper out of Vietnam before the Vietcong
take over. Braddock (Norris) suffers a lot - first he believes his pregnant
Vietnamese wife has been killed, and then he gets shot in the back by
a citizen. However, when we cut to twelve years later and Braddock has
to go back to the Republic of Vietnam to get his wife and appallingly
liquid-eyed Amerasian son out, the movie degenerates into the usual
assemblage of torture, car crashes, exploding helicopters, lousy acting
and scenes in which Norris breaks the necks of oriental stuntmen. Obviously
Norris won't be happy until the entire population of the Republic of
Vietnam has either been rescued or killed. Here, there is a very noticable
glitch in his attitudes, whereby he heroically does his best for the
young teenage half-breed orphans and yet blithely slaughters hundreds
of their conscripted-into-the-army elder brothers. Chuck's acting still
consists of reacting to all tragic news with a look that suggests painful
haemorrhoids, and his brother directs with an equivalent lack of commitment.
There's also a really embarassing performance from Aki Aleong as the
evil general Quoc, who cackles whenever he gets to torture a child,
and one of the most cringe-making theme songs of all time, 'I Can See
the Light of Freedom Shining in Your Eyes'. First Published In: City Limits no.355 (21 July 1988) p.27 Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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