By Joe Bob Briggs
Before I tell you about BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION 3, where Chuck Norris goes over to Vietnam to get out all the prisoners he forgot to get out in his last three movies, I wanna talk to you for a minute about the greatest threat to human rights the world has ever known:
Vietnamese refugees who can never go home because they're getting too rich in the restaurant business.
We may never know how many there really are. No one wants to talk about it. The only official reports we have is that they've seen scattered throughout the Midwest, in places like St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, so that they can be hidden from sight among populations who believe the run Chinese restaurants.
Hers's just one blood-curdling example. At the Nguyen Van Thuy "Happy Eggroll" Restaurant in Tyler, Texas, patrons are served cabbage-leaf bamboo-shoot sweet-and-sour fondue fajitas, a dish which would be recognized by any Vietnam veteran as the famous "G.I. Griddle" sold at the open-air market in Dien Bien Phu as a cure for malaria. Yet the local restaurant critic in Tyler calls it simply "scrumptious Oriental fast-food."
The question I keep asking is, "Why?" Why this massive cover-up by the government? Why not let these innocent people go home? Why prolong the secret war?
"Why? I'll tell you why," says Colonel Jeffrey T. "Two-nosed" Windsor of the U.S. Marines top-secret Operation Doggie Bag. "Because the Cong never forgets. They suffered, now we're gonna suffer. Do you realize how much monosodium glutamate is packed into every single plate of black piggy goo they serve? Do you? Lemme put it this way. They said Agent Orange was a crime."
Windsor refused to comment on exactly what covert operations were underway at this time to get the Vietnamese restaurants safely out of the country where they belong, but this reporter was able to gather a few details:
(1) Sometime in 1988 the Internal Revenue Service will conduct "routine" audits of anyone living in this country without any visible vowels in his name.
(2) Shortly thereafter, this information will be used to identify targets fro rescue operations in nine American cities.
(3) Crack teams of trained health inspectors, building-code experts, and killer restaurant critics will descend on approximately 100 Vietnamese restaurants and, within one day, offer them all one0way tickets on Thai Airways to Ho Chi Minh City. These brave men, our only hope at this point, are now of course the Ng Team. Let's give them all the support we can
Speaking of exposure to lethal substances, BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION 3 is the latest exploding-bamboo classic from Cannon Films, but this time Chuck has to fly back over to Nam to get all the imprisoned orphans out of there. For the last 13 years Chuck thought his Vietnamese wife was dead, cause just before he got airlifted out of Saigon he saw this body that looked like a charcoal briquet with eyeballs, and he assumed it was his wife cause she was wearing an ivory bracelet.
Unfortunately, Chuck married somebody so stupid she hasn't figured out how to use the telephone for the past 13 years, and so all she does all day is sit around in her mud shack with the son that Chuck don't know he has wand the pray for Chuck to come back. Of course, we know what Chuck was doing all those years--he was making MISSING IN ACTION 1 and 2. Anyhow, finally a Catholic priest is making his rounds in the Nam projects, and he finds this lady named Mr. James Braddock, and he thinks "that's funny," only he don't know how to use the telephone either and so he flies to Washington, D.C. and finds Chuck in a bar and tells the CIA so they can hassle Chuck and tell him, "Hey, man, you don't need a wife. Forget the bimbo." So that Chuck can eventually fly back over to Nam and kickbox some Commie hiney.
We all know what happens next. First he flies to Bangkok to get some ammo, hire some sleazy guys, and get chased through the bazaar so the cars can run over 20 fruit stands. The he sneaks into Nam. The he gets captured and tortured by the sadistic General Quoc. Then he tap-dances on the teeth of 140 machine-gun-toting Congaroos until he can get all the imprisoned orphans out of the country. These people do know how to make a sequel.
We have a new exploding bamboo record: 75 dead bodies, including five broken necks with excellent sound effects. No breasts. Diehard battery torture. Tiptoe torture. Three exploding bamboo towers. Five exploding jeeps. Two exploding trucks. Exploding chopper. Plane crash. Three motor vehicle chases, including an Army truck full of orphans chased through the jungle by a missile-equipped assault copter. Gratuitous belly dancing. Kung Fu. Pontoon bumber boat Fu. Shoulder cannon Fu. Saigon Fu. Bangkok Fu. Ho Chi Fu. Asian-American Actors Guild Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Ron Barker, as the sleazeball Bangkok arms merchant friend, for saying "Vietnam--I never thought I'd be coming back--I guess we never really CAN leave, can we?"; Miki Kim, as teh wife that sat in a mud shack waitin on Chuck for 13 years, for saying, "Oh, it doesn't matter"; Aki Aleong, as teh evil General Quoc, for saying, "You must pay for the crimes you have committed against my country!" and "Braddock! Braddock! Boogie Eye! Boogie Eye!"; Jack Rader, as Littlejohn the CIA three-piece high sheriff, for screaming "Don't step on toes, Braddock!"; and Big Chuck, for saying, "I don't step on toes, Littlejohn, I step on necks!" and "Kids, get in the truck!" and "Walk or crawl, we're gonna make it!"
Three stars. Joe Bob says check it out.