Rare courage. Having decided to compete with one of his main competitors, Chuck Norris decided to make his own action movie about the war in fucking Vietnam. Collaborating with him studio “Canon” financed a low-budget action about shooting in the jungle, under the sonorous title “Without News the Missing”. This film cost only $ 2.5 million, was shot at a hurricane pace, and was completed by the end of 1984, that is, about six months before the release of the national and world film rental blockbuster with Sylvester Stallone – “First Blood”. Part Two: Rambo. In which it was essentially the same: the hero Sly - a veteran of the Vietnam War, returned on a secret mission of the government in the jungle to find held on enemy territory prisoners of war soldiers. Since the project led by George Pan Cosmatos was ambitious and ambitious, it was impossible to conceal its creation. Evidently learning that Rambo would return to Vietnam in the second installment to take an indirect revenge, Norris conceived of going into the unfriendly jungle with the same mission. The plot of the painting by Joseph Zitto talks about a brave warrior - Colonel James Bradock, who flies as part of a diplomatic group of Americans in Ho Chi Minh - the former Saigon, where he intends to make a statement that the Vietnamese are insidiously holding missing soldiers. But during a public hearing, Bradock is accused of war crimes and told to get out of the country. But the character of Chuck Norris is not slutty - he secretly conducts a reconnaissance raid into the headquarters of the enemy command, finding out from their general where the secret camp with American prisoners of war is located. And then, having found an old friend - Jack Tucker, and having obtained a boat and properly armed with local smugglers, Bradock sets off on a journey.
As can already be seen from the cursory retelling of the synopsis - it is simply obscenely slicked "calc" with a parallel filmed then militant. Of course, the meager budget did not allow to shoot “Without the News of the Missing” at the same technically high level as “Rambo-2”, and in the plot there are fewer explosions and shootings, obviously cosmetically “make-up” for Vietnam locations, even the forest in the frame – far from jungle! And the explosions themselves - shootouts and other PR - show, not so skillfully and elegantly executed as in the tape with Stallone. In the manner of the operator João Fernandis, who often collaborated with Norris, we can safely disqualify this project from class A militants. Typically thrashing performance of many action scenes and the absence of colorful artists in other roles leads to the fact that today it is strange to realize that at one time this film rolled in theaters. If something like this were to come out today, he would immediately be sent straight to the TV and video market! But for the mid-motley 80s, when inexpensive militants about martial arts were popular, and in Hollywood small, but too prolific film studios opened on shares - like the above-mentioned company "Canon", which was run by cunning bosses Yoronim Globe and Menachem Golan, just the same specialized in creating paintings of category "B" (mainly also according to the behest of Roger Corman - the cooler the poster, the greater the chance to lure a credulous viewer to the cinema). However, no matter what, we won’t blame this film. At least because there is a saying about the gul, which is the invention of the city. Nevertheless, the director - a craftsman, and screenwriters - plagiarists - managed to remove and release on screens (while avoiding a lawsuit from Tristar Pictures) a completely tolerant action movie that easily withstands repeated views with long time intervals. Probably the whole thing is in the “machis” charisma of the bearded karate, as well as in the fact that the naive way of telling the story does not even seriously want to be scolded. In fact, here the authors have collected all the possible clichés about military militants about Vietnam: from the evil officer who cuts laughs for a big knife to the American hanging on a rack, the insidious politicians of the victorious republic who hold the enemy soldiers even after the end of the military conflict, and to noble mercenaries who are ready to risk their lives to save their fellow citizens who were caught in another brawl in the jungle. Perhaps the most striking thing about all this infantile-teenage ugliness is that the relative commercial success of “Without Message of the Missing” (and despite the indignant attacks on the film by professional film critics), Chuck Norris did not stop there. A year later, he decided to release a sequel, and even later, so in general - turned this ridiculous action movie about prisoners of war in Vietnam into a trilogy!