1FF Film Club - ACTION FILMS OF THE 1980'S

[Craig]

Only five nominations for this one but that is more than made up for in the combined body count. As we only have five films though you only get two votes instead of three this time.

Commando (1985)
A retired elite Black Ops Commando launches a one man war against a group of South American criminals who have kidnapped his daughter to blackmail him into starting a revolution and getting an exiled dictator back into power.

Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988)
James Braddock once again returns to Vietnam, 12 years after the end of the war, to rescue his thought-dead Vietnamese wife and son, and a group of Amerasian orphans held in another prison camp presided over by a sadistic Vietnamese general whom was one of those that tortured Braddock during his stay in a similar prison camp just a few years earlier.

Red Dawn (1984)
It is the dawn of World War III. In mid-western America, a group of teenagers bands together to defend their town, and their country, from invading Soviet forces.

Predator (1987)
A team of commandos on a mission in a Central American jungle find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.

Lethal Weapon (1987)
A veteran cop, Murtaugh, is partnered with a young suicidal cop, Riggs. Both having one thing in common; hating working in pairs. Now they must learn to work with one another to stop a gang of drug smugglers.

 

[Aber gas]

I'm so fucking excited.

 

[Craig]

Never seen the Missing in Action films so went for that. The 'I don't step on toes, I step on necks' line helped with that decision. Seen the other four more than a few times each so gone for my own nomination too.

 

[Aber gas]

Never seen the Missing in Action films so went for that. The 'I don't step on toes, I step on necks' line helped with that decision. Seen the other four more than a few times each so gone for my own nomination too.

Norris's best film which given his body of work makes Braddock a masterpiece. Hopefully it's chosen and can be a "gateway" for people to discover his other stellar performances.

 

[Craig]

Have you seen the documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films ?

I reckon you'd really enjoy it.

 

[Aber gas]

Have you seen the documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films ?

I reckon you'd really enjoy it.

I have mate. On your recommendation in the box.

 

[Craig]

Deadline for this will be midnight tonight.

 

[ZianfrancoGoal]

Deadline for this will be midnight tonight.

and with one point in it!

this one will go all the way folks.

 

[Craig]

Votes are in.

Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094792/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/braddock-missing-in-action-iii

Only one place to view it on there for £3.49. Will be checking a few streaming sites personally and will report back if I find a good one.

 

[Craig]

Watched it this afternoon.

High body count - check
Lots of explosions - check
High speed car chase - check
Indestructible protagonist - check
OTT antagonist - check

Overall I enjoyed it, but there are definitely much better contemporary examples of Vietnam vet returning to complete some unfinished business. Despite the truly awful song playing over it the first sequence covering the fall of Saigon and Braddock losing his missus is pretty good. I thought Aki Aleong's bad guy was great too and no doubt partially inspired the Kim Jong Il of Team America.

Favourite kill was the dude who got bayoneted then shot with a grenade round. Chuck Norris is found severely lacking when it comes to one liners though and is about as charismatic as John Major on valium.

So yeah, I wasn't blown away by it....

 

[Martino Knockavelli]

Just watched. I have not seen a Chuck Norris film before. In fact I'm not sure I've seen a Chuck Norris anything apart from 2 mins of Texas Ranger when channel surfing.

It was a way bigger budget production than I had expected. I assumed it would be a 10p bin job affair, but no... helicopters (multiple!), tanks, location shooting, elaborate sets, many extras, big explosions. Which produces a cognitive dissonance. I enjoy cheapo stuff, film-makers banging their heads against the limitations of finance and talent. This certainly has the latter but not the excuse of the former, and I dunno how to feel about that. It’s like paying £8.50 for a Rustlers cheese burger, a Rustlers cheese burger that takes over 100 mins to eat instead of 85.

Things I liked: irony and knowing-ness are poison to cinematic trash. That's how we end up with threads full of Rammys going LOL SHARKNADO. This film appears to have originated on a planet in which such concepts simply don't exist. And pulling off all this stuff off with a straight face is no mean feat. At least two slo-mo NOOOOO death scenes, the wretched FREEDOM rock ballad theme song, the immortal line "MAYDAY MAYDAY I HAVE A PLANE LOAD OF AMERASIAN CHILDREN"... it really means all of it, and we even get a wee Serious Message caption as a coda before the credits roll. Fair play, even it it is all completely mad. Great example of the inverted, quasi-radicalism of conservative figures swimming against the tide w/ flag waving cinematic depictions of Vietnam...

In all of that it's the perfect document of the 80s action hero as well. Antiheroes had been part of the big screen mainstream since at least the 50s, nuanced examinations of problematised masculinity about as long, but this has no truck with any of that (compare and contrast w/ Die Hard, made same year and belonging to approx the same genre, but may as well be from a parallel universe in terms of its mores). Norris is a shamelessly Christ like figure, literally rescuing a passel of orphans from racist, rapist, shit-accented paedo scum. But he's even better than the original Jesus was, cos he's named after a blue collar town in the rust belt, and was sent to Earth as the embodiment of patriotism. In accordance to the type he is hardly given to great demonstrations of emotional sensitivity, but we do get lengthy (fucking lengthy) pathos/bathos scenes just to confirm that this is all very deeply felt and he's crying on the inside. There is also a long torture scene which results in him running around with no top on for a while, but the film seems blissfully unaware of the homoeroticism of it all, which is also part of being a paragon of the 80s action hero v1.0.

Unfortunately tho, and this is what really struck me about this film having not watched much of him before, Chuck Norris is total shit, and not even in an entertaining way. I was not expecting the Great Garrick, but (as Creg notes) he has zero presence or charisma. He is a good kick with a great pair of pecs and that's it. In one of the slo-mo death scenes he gets out acted by a 12 year old whose only other contribution to the film is being an Oedipal little shite and shouting "I HAYYY YUOUU BRALLOCK!".

3 bags of popcorn and 2 grenade launchers

 

[SALTIRE]

Did it have most of the hallmarks of an 80's action flick? Lets see:

Lead character suffers mentally and physically, yep.
Lead character to be seen topless and oiled, yep.
Annoying sidekick saying cheesy quotes, yep.
Lead character to carry a multifunction gun the size of a small ladder, yep.
Chief baddie to be overly sadistic, laugh hysterically and curse the name of the lead character, yep.
Slow-motion mowing down of bad guys, yep.
Secondary characters stating the obvious, yep.
Cheesy ending complete with rock track, yep.
Dreadful acting, yep.

Yep this one passes all of those and more besides; and is indeed a classic 80's action film. Braddock is a hell of a guy!!

8 gut-kicks out of 10.

 

[Aber gas]

Braddock is a masterpiece. A cinematic expression of white bread American rage. A Reagan inspired riposte to the whiny, defeatist Nam films that are its contemporaries. There is no reassessment of US involvement in the conflict. No navel gazing, the only thing Braddock is angry about is they didn't win.
Norris plays the part perfectly. Braddock is a man driven by a quiet rage and stony stoicism so it would be unseemly for him to partake in the one liners of say Willis or the obnoxious preening of a Seagal.
A well deserved 9/10 for me and I hope it inspires people to seek out the rest of Chuck''s art.