Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Fantastic!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988) ** (out of 4) To say this Cannon film was just a tad bit far-fetched would be like saying Chuck Norris was overlooked for a Best Actor Oscar-nomination. Col. James Braddock (Norris) learns that the wife he thought died during the fall of Saigon is actually alive and he has a 12-year-old son that he never knew about. It turns out the Vietnamese government doesn't like their people who worked for the Americans so the two are deep in enemy territory so Braddock must sneak back in and try to rescue them but he's got the sadistic Gen. Quoc (Aki Aleong) waiting for him. Many reviews will point out that the entire storyline for this third film goes against stuff that happened in the first two movies but I'm not going to put that much thought into a film like this. This is Cannon we're talking about after all and like most of their films this one here is high on action and short on brains. Overall I thought this was a decent little action picture but I can't help but think it would have been much better had the original director (Joseph Zito) not walked from the production. Aaron Norris makes his directorial debut here and to say it's a bad one would be an understatement. He's clearly in over his head and the perfect example of this are the first few scenes in the film. The opening takes place as we see what happens to the wife yet this scene just drags on and on to the point where you get bored with everything taking place. This sequence should have happened at a much quicker pace. The next sequence has Braddock learning the secret of his wife and son, being warned not to go by the CIA and the next thing we know he's in Vietnam and all of this happens in the matter of minutes. The CIA even manages to follow him even though you have to wonder why they waited for him to get there. I mean, why not just stop him at the U.S. airport if they knew when he was going? Norris, the director, just can't handled most of the scenes and the editing isn't much better as thing really come across cheap and ugly at times. With all that said, most people are going to be coming to this thing for action and it at least delivers that. I love those silly explosions and gunfights that you find in a Cannon picture and there are plenty of them here. Bodies are constantly being shot up and the explosions are all of good quality. The eye candy is never short but then they have to ruin things by trying to be dramatic with the relationship between Norris and his son. All of this just comes off extremely silly and it doesn't help that Roland Harrah III just can't act and his scenes of being mad at his father are laughable. Norris isn't much better but at least he knows how to throw a punch and break necks.

Chuck Norris made a third film in the missing in action series with each film even more preposterous than the previous one. Here, as Braddock, he returns to Vietnam yet again to search for a wife and son he didn't know were alive. Norris encounters another evil general, as he did in the previous film, who also has a penchant for torture. By the film's end, Norris saves an entire orphanage of Amerasian kids from the general and his cronies. The first half hour of the film is filled with a lot of unnecessary exposition before things get going. The middle third of the film is probably the best and most enjoyable because it's more realistic and tension-filled than the last third. The last half hour once again reduces all tension and action to a comic book level with Norris turning into a one man army yet again; he fires weapons, snaps necks, and uses enough kicks to run a martial arts class. Unlike previous films of his, Norris only yields one great line of dialog. Remember, he doesn't step on toes; he steps on necks. It's probably slightly below average for a Chuck Norris film. *1/2 of 4 stars.

After the decidedly mundane sequel to the original film, this Chuck Norris outing served to re-stabilize the balance so to speak, albeit whilst seemingly contradicting the events of the previous entry. The story here concerns our unflappable all American hero, Colonel James Braddock who returns to Vietnam yet again (damn, they must be sick of him by now!) this time to rescue his wife who he previously believed to have been killed way back during the fall of Saigon. As it happens, Braddock is also somewhat surprised to find that he is additionally a father(!) But of course, matters seldom flow smoothly in these flicks and sure enough, barely have our long parted family been reunited before the Vietnamese army sour the occasion. Fear not, for not to let a pesky mere army put a damper on his plans, our man Braddock is soon running around with a handy arsenal and saving a whole mission full of children as he attempts to get them across the border into Thailand.OK, so this is far fetched beyond belief as were its predecessors in fact, but if you can manage to suspend your disbelief and go with the flow, you will likely thoroughly enjoy this feel good action acting.

i'll make this short. Braddocks back in Nam to save his family and to rescue the children. along the way he dishes out a few beat downs and blows some stuff up. this is the best in the series because it has a lot of action (the other 2 were a bit light on the action) and plenty of mindless, graphic violence. this film is cheesy and not going to win awards but its fun to watch and fans of chuck Norris will love it. my only real complaint is that the song that comes on at the beginning and end is really bad, i mean terrible. in a way this adds to the b movie fun of the film. i wish action films were still like this instead of the special effects overloaded junk we got nowadays. any way, fans of 80's action should definitely pick this up along with the other 2. 9/10