suspense: You just know that Norris is going to succeed in his mission. Come to think of it, why did it take the invincible Norris eight years to make good his own escape?" Richard Christiansen of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 2 stars out of 4 and wrote that "Norris stolidly delivers as the strong, silent loner who cuts through government red tape to nail the villains and rescue the oppressed, and the fact that any American soldier beats the Vietnamese (shown to be slimy, sadistic brutes) may bring cheer to many people. Overall, however, this is standard war action, not very energetically filmed but zipped up with a little female nudity and much technological trickery". Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post wrote: "Chuck Norris fans will not be disappointed by Missing in Action, a bang-bang you're dead exploitation flick from the Cannon Group in which the action is rarely missing ... Norris doesn't do much acting—he's the poor man's Clint Eastwood—but his karate is crackerjack. And Walsh is hammily engaging as Braddock's sidekick". Scott Weinberg of eFilmCritic.com gave the film 2 stars out of 5, writing that "Norris does Stallone... badly" in his review. In a 2003 BBC article entitled "Rambo: Pretenders to the Throne", Almar Haflidason wrote that "the runaway success of the Rambo trilogy inspired dozens of rip-offs", citing that the Missing in Action series was the most famous of the Rambo clones. The 1996 movie guide "Seen That, Now What?", gave the film a rating of "C", stating "Vietnam vet Norris returns to Southeast Asia to rescue American POWs in this Rambo rip-off, with one-note villians, a politically misguided theme, and second-rate action sequences". Derek Adams of Time Out wrote that the film was "so bad that it defies belief. It's xenophobic, amateurish and extraordinarily dull". He also labeled it as "all-gooks-are-baddies propaganda". On AMC's movie guide, Jeremy Beday of Rovi described the film as a "crass, dopey Rambo-esque film that ultimately fails to connect with anything interesting in the realm of fact or fiction" and that its "chop-socky, shoot-em-up, explosion-a-minute action quickly wears thin". Steve Crum of Video-Reviewmaster.com wrote that MIA was Chuck Norris' best film. Earl Cressey of DVD Talk reported in 2000: "I found Missing in Action to be fairly enjoyable with great action sequences and a pretty good plot. However, only Braddock's character is developed at all; the other characters make