Blu-ray Review: Braddock: Missing In Action III

Braddock: Missing In Action III is the final film in the Missing In Action series, starring Chuck Norris as Colonel James Braddock, a man who was once held as a POW, then returned to rescue other prisoners of war. This third film opens with the fall of Saigon in April of 1975. The city is in chaos, as people are looting and bombs are exploding. There is chaos in the U.S. embassy as well, where James Braddock goes looking for his wife, Lin (Miki Kim). He learns that she went home to get her papers.

Meanwhile Lin is packing for America, leaving behind most of her possessions to a friend, who apparently isn’t satisfied with the nice dresses and decides to steal Lin’s bracelet. The building is destroyed and Braddock arrives to see a charred corpse being carried out. The face is burned beyond recognition, but the bracelet he gave his wife is on the arm, so he assumes it’s his wife. Lin is on her way to the embassy, but her purse containing her papers is stolen, so she has trouble gaining access.

The scene at the embassy has some nice little details, like shots of the army blowing up its own trucks, and the flag and embassy sign being removed while the crowd surges. But then as Braddock is flown out on a helicopter, he looks up at the blades, and that shot is followed by a shot of a ceiling fan (making me think of Apocalypse Now).

The film then takes us to Washington D.C. in present day (well, present day as of the release of the film – 1988), when Reverend Polanski (Yehuda Efroni), a priest from a children’s mission in Vietnam, tells Braddock that his wife is alive and that he has a twelve-year-old son. Braddock doesn’t believe him, but a man named Littlejohn at the CIA inadvertently confirms the information. Littlejohn warns Braddock, “Don’t step on any toes.” Braddock replies: “I don’t step on toes, Littlejohn. I step on necks.” It’s such a silly line, and it’s accompanied by an imposing musical cue, which makes it all the more delightfully goofy. But that’s part of the enjoyment of watching this film now. After all, this is a 1980s action movie. Anyway, off Braddock goes to rescue his wife and son.

And we get fights and stunts and car chases. It’s not long before he finds Lin and the boy living in a shack. But things can’t be that easy for James Braddock. The boy resents him and is frightened. And soon they’re surrounded by soldiers, including General Quoc (Aki Aleong), who seems to hold a personal grudge against Braddock. And things get pretty serious pretty quickly.

There are some good moments in the film. I love the way Quoc seems to become impatient with his own torturous game. And there is a fairly intense scene later on involving one of the female children and a soldier. But of course there is some heavy-handed filmmaking as well, like when we get not one, but two shots of a child’s doll being left behind. This film was directed by Aaron Norris, a stunt coordinator whose directorial efforts have been almost entirely made up of projects starring his brother Chuck. And Chuck Norris was one of the writers on this particular film. Still, the movie is enjoyable in just the way you expect it to be. I used to own it on videocassette, and I had a good time revisiting it on Blu-ray.

By the way, the song that takes us into the closing credits is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard in my life, with lyrics like “When I look into your eyes, what do I see/It is the love of freedom staring back at me/I can almost see the eagle take the sky, see her fly/It is our love of freedom that has always kept us strong.” Yikes!

Braddock: Missing In Action III is scheduled to be released on Blu-ray on March 15, 2016 through Shout! Factory. The disc contains no special features.