Missing in Action / YMMV

Awesome Music: Jay Chattaway's soundtrack is pretty damn impressive, especially the main titles.
Catharsis Factor: Yin, after spending most of The Beginning kicking the dog and humiliating Braddock and his team, Braddock delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on him at the ending is nothing short but cathartic.
Complete Monster:
- Missing in Action 2: The Beginning: Colonel Yin is the sadistic Vietnamese commander of the POW Camp where James Braddock is sent. Yin mistreats and routinely tortures the prisoners of the camp, a favorite tactic of his being to play Russian Roulette with his prisoners. Having spent most of his supply of prisoners over years of torture, Yin is determined to completely break Braddock and those remaining. Yin tortures Braddock in a variety of ways, from forcing a sack over his head with a savage rat inside, to making Braddock watch as he burns a fellow prisoner dying of malaria alive—with the extra kick that Yin had earlier promised to save him. Yin also murders a photographer who stumbles across the camp with his Russian Roulette game, and kills his own partner just to acquire his helicopter.
- Braddock: Missing in Action 3: General Quoc is another evil Vietnamese commander who, in the first half-hour of the movie, murders Braddock's wife in front of him and his estranged son Van. After capturing Braddock and Van, Quoc boasts about his long history of torture and has Van and Braddock subjected to his specialty: suspending Braddock by a rope and gleefully electrocuting him, all whilst attached to a trigger that, when Braddock submits, will blow his own son's head off. After Braddock and Van escape, Quoc takes Reverend Polanski's orphanage of American-Asian children hostage to lure Braddock into his clutches, all of which he's happy to murder to get to Braddock.
Critical Dissonance: The first movie was heavily panned by critics, but was a commercial success is now considered a Cult Classic and one of Chuck Norris's best films.
Just Here for Godzilla: Chances are people watch this film just to see Chuck Norris kick NVA/PAVN ass.
Memetic Mutation: The translation of the "I don't step on toes, I step on necks" exchange in Braddock: Missing in Action 3 is a popular snippet in French internet culture due to its sheer cheesiness:
Little John: Braddock! I'm warning you: Beware where you're stepping into.
Braddock: I step wherever I want, Little John. And it's often on people's face.
Moral Event Horizon:
- Colonel Yin from the second movie crosses it when he gives an infected prisoner a lethal dose of opium before burning him to death.
- General Quoc from the third movie immediately crosses the line when he shoots Li in the head before capturing Braddock and Van.
Narm: Braddock jumps off a tower holding a couple of grenades. Said tower explodes for no reason.^note
Sequelitis: The series gets progressively worse with each installment.
Serial Numbers Filed Off: The first two films are based on James Cameron's original script for Rambo: First Blood Part II but Cannon rushed their film into production and changed enough material to avoid a lawsuit from Rambo's producers.
Signature Scene: Chuck Norris rising out of the water, everyone?
So Okay, It's Average: Especially in comparison with the second film.
Unintentional Period Piece: Like its inspiration Rambo: First Blood Part II, the series is largely reflective of the increased American nationalism and anti-communism during the Reagan presidency, especially the now-largely discredited conspiracy theory that the US government deliberately left American prisoners of war behind in Vietnam.^note

YMMV / Missing in Action

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