My Cultural Diet

In honor of Chuck Norris’s recent death, I decided to watch this, one of his most popular films, and his first collaboration with both director Joseph Zito and Cannon Films. Along with other ’80s films like Rambo: First Blood Part II and P.O.W. The Escape, Missing in Action drew inspiration from the idea of American prisoners of war still being held in Vietnam. Norris plays Colonel James Braddock, a former POW who returns to Vietnam as part of a U.S. delegation, though he has a far more violent agenda in mind. Missing in Action is unrepentantly patriotic, avoiding any semblance of moral ambiguity. Early in the film, for example, a Vietnamese general (James Hong, whose talents are wasted here) accuses Braddock of war crimes. While that might’ve made for a more interesting film, it would obviously undermine the righteousness of Braddock’s crusade. Notably, there are no similar reservations concerning Braddock’s willingness to sexually assault a woman in order to give himself an alibi. (Ah, the ’80s, when you could rip off a woman’s clothes and she’d still kiss you goodbye the next morning when you leave on your secret — and very illegal — mission.) A better, smarter film might interrogate its hero’s willingness to commingle revenge and desperation with a desire to save fellow soldiers. But its borderline jingoism, combined with Zito’s unimaginative direction and Norris’s perpetually grim visage, makes Missing in Action less gripping than it could’ve been. If I had to pick a Zito/Norris collaboration, my choice would be 1985’s Invasion U.S.A., a similarly uber-patriotic flick that more fully embraces its absurdity and goes bigger in the action sequences… and has better one-liners.

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