Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Missing in Action 2: The Beginning!

Missing in Action 1 was a solid action flick about I-Can-Has-Cheese-Burger-era internet meme Chuck Norris freeing POWs from Vietnam prison camps, sort of like Rambo: First Blood Part 2, if by "sort of", you mean "exactly". While this automatically makes it better than whatever drivel you consoom to keep up with your coworkers' inane water cooler conversation, it's still kind of redundant. Prequel The Beginning, however, mines the formula quite differently: Norris and his squad are captured by the commies under the command of Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh, who is not an ad for a new digital appliance).

"Sir, please state your name."
"Soon."
"How soon?"
"No."
"What?"
"Huh?"
-this actor's screen test

Years after the war is over, Colonel Yin harbours demented dreams of breaking Norris's Colonel Braddock, having him confess to bogus war crime charges. Yin employs the carrot and the stick: as well as brutalising his captives, he has buck-broken Captain David Nester (Steven Williams) try to ply the others to give in with appeals to pragmatism, in a good cop-bad cop routine you'll recognise from your """"centrist"""" peers entreating you to join the current year. Come on, man, everyone else has folded. That was Not The Hill To Die On, and nor will be the next hill, nor the next.

"Hey, look, you guys, I'm on your side. I mean, I used to lmao my ass off at Encyclopedia Dramatica and Anal Cunt lyrics too, but the fact is we live in a world where saying Chinaman or retard is a thoughtcrime, and I for one am going to thrive in it, you problematic sexist biggots" - Nester

When POWs try to escape across a wooden bridge, the commies light it up with a flamethrower, which probably wasn't meant as a metaphor for the characteristic eptitude of pinko forward planning, but indubitably works as one.

"My work here is done" - Comrade Einstein over here

You might expect this movie to be comically cheesy, but the harsh conditions of camp life it portrays make it a lot more resonant and honest than your typical war flick. In the gnarliest scene, Yin and his goons attempt to torture and/or kill Braddock by placing an enraged and panicked rat in a sack over his head:

♪Despite all my rage...

You might think this is an absurd invention meant to demonise the brave anticolonialists but, as always, you'd be wrong because commies were torturing people with rats as early as the Russian revolution. By some accounts the practice continues in North Korea's gulags into the 21st Century. Even the stuff people make up about the relatively few rightist dictators doesn't approach this tier of casual psychopathy, but you've already decided not to learn this most central lesson of history, so keep wearing your epic cool guy Che T-shirt, I guess. Fortunately this is a Chuck Norris picture so after taking Yin's bullshit for most of the runtime Braddock finally grows bored and leads what's left of his men in a rampage that destroys the camp and puts paid to Yin in the most satisfying beatdown ever committed to film. If you were minded to give this overlooked kino credit for sly symbolism, you might say Yin met his Yang.

"Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits" - Confucius