Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)
Missing in Action 2: The Beginning is a 1985 American action adventure film, and a prequel to Missing in Action, both of which star Chuck Norris. It was directed by Lance Hool, and written by Steve Bing, Larry Levinson and Arthur Silver. It is the second installment in the Missing in Action film series. Missing in Action 2: The Beginning was filmed back to back with the original Missing in Action and was originally intended to be the first film of the two. But according to Joseph Zito, director of what was to become Missing in Action, it was decided that the sequel was a much better film and would be a more successful first film. Consequently, Cannon just switched titles and release dates so that the planned sequel was released first, and the planned first film was released as a prequel. It was followed by another sequel, Braddock: Missing in Action III, featuring the same character, but with a stand-alone screenplay.
Plot:
Ten years before freeing the US POWs from a brutal General, Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris) was held in a North Vietnamese POW camp run by sadistic Colonel Yin (Soon-Teck Oh), who forces the POWs to grow opium for a French drug runner named François (Pierre Issot), and tries to get Braddock to admit to and sign a long list of war crimes. One of his fellow soldiers Captain David Nester (Steven Williams) has been convinced (likely by Yin) that their country’s abandoned them and has become one of Yin’s henchmen for which his fellow soldiers denounce him as a traitor. During his team’s time in captivity, they are relentlessly subjected to various forms of humiliating torture, such as Sergeant Opelka having an unloaded
pistol fired into his head, Yin forcing Braddock and Nester to have a fist fight and Braddock being hung by his feet and having a bag with a rat inside it placed over his head and Braddock being told that his wife has left him and remarried. Franklin, another US POW, starts to suffer from malaria, and Braddock exchanges an admission of guilt to Yin’s charges of war crimes for medicine for the infected soldier. Yin breaks his deal with Braddock, and gives the soldier a lethal dose of opium and later cremates him in front of Braddock. Enraged, Braddock escapes from the camp, plots to free his fellow prisoners and destroy the prison camp.
Box office:
The film opened at #3, grossing $3,868,515 in the opening weekend. It was released in 1,336 theaters for a $2,895 average. The opening week takings accounted for 36% of its total gross. The total US market revenue is $10,755,447.