Action Jackson

• The car seen at the mansion, the Halley, is actually a 1987 Pontiac Fiero with body effects that make the car resemble a Ferrari Testarossa coupe.

>>> WARNING: Here Be Spoilers <<<
Trivia items below here contain information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you’ve not already seen this title.

• SPOILER: Before Tony is killed by the fake shipping-and-handler, he’s told, “It’s C.O.D.” This can have two meanings: “Cash On Delivery” or “Cause Of Death”.

• Crew or equipment visible: When Carl Weathers and Vanity jump out of the hotel window to escape the police and onto the roof of his convertible parked in an alley, their impact reveals the mattresses inside the car covered with black cloth which comes undone at the rear window. You can also see the scaffolding at the bottom of the scene for the camera, also protected with a mattress.
• Revealing mistakes: When Carl Weathers and Vanity jump out of the hotel window, if you look carefully at “Vanity’s” legs you can see that the stunt double didn’t shave his legs for this scene, and his feet could never fit in her shoes.
• Continuity: When Jackson is on the roof of the taxi, the driver fires his gun through the roof making several holes. However, when the taxi crashes a few seconds later, there are no holes.

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: In the end of the movie when Jericho gets shot, the film keeps moving back and forth to scenes with blood on his shirt to scenes with no blood on his shirt around the left shoulder.

He jostles a conceited, two-faced, backstabbing mass murderer calledPeter Dellaplane (Craig T. Nelson). Director Craig R. Baxley has notonly carried it off, but makes you believe it… One must also give someof the credit to Carl Weathers whose erect muscular body and his charmand good looks give some credence to the heroics…

The picture contains fun, lots of action, and two sexy women…

Vanity looked so gorgeous when she was shot up with heroin…

Stone met her husband after his first wife died and his son went toprison… She thinks that he may seem greedy and arrogant but he remainedloved by everyone, and the whole experience changed him… She alsothinks that Jackson is not so different from her husband, that both arestubborn, and both intent on getting what they want…

2) The violence in this movie is brutal and efficiently directed, the actionsequences spectacular, the main villain great and the hero, Carl Weathers,can hold his own when compared to other big action stars of the 80’s. Inshort, "Action Jackson" has all the ingredients to be a good rental choicefor action fans. If only they had avoided some of those needlessdigressions(like Jackson’s fight with a junkie)…. (**1/2)

3) Great late 80’s Action Film that’s a lot of fun!. The characters wereall great, Especially Weather’s and Vanity’s characters. The Mainvillain was VERY menacing in Craig T. Nelson he does fabulous here.There is lots of action, and lots of funny one liners from CarlWeathers!. This has been Panned by a lot of people why? it’s a lot offun and i personally enjoyed it a lot!. The Direction is fine. Craig R.Baxley does a fine job keeping the film at a tight pace , cool cameraangles and overall he did a good job!. There is a bit of blood andviolence. a person gets some bloody cuts on there face from glass,knife in the hand, 2 knives in the chest, arrow in the back, 5 verybloody gunshot wounds, impaling, and someone gets hit by a cargraphically. The Acting is great!. Carl Weathers is AWESOME heredelivering those one liners like a champ, he had good chemistry withVanity and overall he just entertained the hell out of me! and wasperfect for the part he is an awesome actor and one of my favorites!.(Weathers Rules!). Craig T. Nelson is perfect as The Main villain he isvery menacing and did a terrific job overall!. Vanity is GORGEOUS! anddid surprisingly very well here i liked her a lot. Sharon Stone isSTUNNINGLY GORGEOUS! and does good here too too bad she is ratherwasted!. Robert Davi, Ed O’Ross, Mary Ellen Trainor, and Nicholas Worthare all good in there short roles. Overall i highly recommend this fora night of cheesy fun!. ***1/2 out of 5 (Barely)

4) Did you get my joke? No? Well then let me explain it to you cretins outthere who have never indulged in bad cinema. Mike Nelson, the genius whowrote for and hosted the insanely brilliant series Mystery Science Theatre3000, published a book all about wonderfully cheesy movies that he liked towatch. Action Jackson was just one of those movies, and I am glad to saythat while it is most certainly dumb and as predictable as a parking meter,it’s just goofy enough to be fun. A lot of people think that when a criticcalls a film cheesy, they mean it’s bad. Not necessarily, my naive friends.Everyone likes to eat cheese every now and then, right? Heck, one of myall-time favorite foods is macaroni and cheese! Sure, we all like to pretendthat we have refined tastes, munching on caviar and other such sophisticatedvittles, but every now and then we just have to let our hair down and have anice slice of good American cheese. And trust me folks, Action Jackson, isjust dripping with the stuff. Just look at the plot: A former lieutenantknown for his hot temper and loose cannon tactics is reduced to a desk job(check). He has a bookish superior who likes to play by the rules andrefuses to let our hero see some "action" until he shapes up (check). Thensuddenly a new case opens up – it seems that the same man who cost ActionJackson’s lieutenant position is up to his old tricks, but no one suspectshim because he’s a respected businessman (check). Will Action Jacksonuncover the villain’s dastardly plot, save the day, get the chick who he atfirst thought was annoying, and get that lucrative lieutenant position back?What do you think?! Come on, this is as by the numbers as you can get,people. This story has been done hundreds of times, and yet here it’s stillsimple, dorky fun. Action Jackson is played by the man who trained SylvesyerStallone in the original Rocky, and Craig "Coach" T. Nelson himself is thebad guy. And to top it all off, VANITY is the romantic love interest! Icould not believe it when her named popped up on the screen. Now I own twomovies starring this horrible actress: Today’s feature, and the John Stamosspy disaster, Never Too Young To Die. What a small world, huh? There areexplosions, car chases, groovy 80s tunes, and even a hotel manager whoselisp is so obvious that you can’t understand a word he says. How can you gowrong? Trust me folks, this is not painful in the slightest. Well, okay,maybe Vanity’s two songs can be zipped through via the fast forward button(check out her nasty hair!), but otherwise Action Jackson is a great B-moviefor those rainy days.

5) When I saw this movie back in 1988, I thought then & think now that it wasone of the most action packed movies for this genre. Carl Weathers plays alikable cop that goes after an unscrupulous high-end car manufacturer. Allof the characters, Vanity, Craig T. Nelson & Sharon Stone round out the castnicely to make an enjoyable, action packed viewing experience for the 1h30mthat it’s on. It wasn’t mean’t to be an academy award winner, but it setout to do what it was intended to do, and that’s to be an action packedmovie from start to finish. If you can appreciate movies from the ’80s,this one will be a welcome addition to any collector’s library. I am gladto see it on DVD, because I have played my VHS copy to the max!

6) Okay, now what isn't there to like about a movie that stars CarlWeathers, Craig T. Nelson, a young Sharon Stone (scrumptious), BillDuke, Vanity (good googly moogly) and tons of other recognizable 80sactors? Nothing! This movie rules. In the words of my roommate, "youcome for Carl Weathers and you stay for Craig T Nelson." Carl Weathersis great as straight ahead copper Action Jackson, but Craig T Nelsonsteals the show here as the evil Mr. Delaplane. He is such a twistedjerk that being the richest man in Detroit and having a young SharonStone as his wife isn't enough, he needs to shoot Vanity full ofheroin, too. (Side note: Vanity was extremely strung out on crackcocaine at this time, read Motley Crue's book: "The Dirt" for moreinfo.) The action and laughs are nonstop. If you love dumb 80s bigbudget action, this is a must see. 8/10.

7) I did a quick search on the internet to see if my memory served meright, and apparently it has. By 1981, the Blaxploitation action filmwas exhausted. – Although Fred Williamson had made a couple of actionfilms in the mid-'80s, these don't really count, because Williamsoncan't act and can't direct.

The good news was that African-American cinema could say farewell to astereotype; the bad news was that Hollywood wanted to find some way tosay farewell to African-American cinema. The mid-'80s were lean yearsfor anyone with dark-skin in Hollywood.

One of the problems had been that people critical of blaxploitation hadmissed the fact that Hollywood only does two type of films with anyregularity, the action film (Western, Sci-Fi, crime, etc.) and thesit-com (domestic comedy). The notion that Hollywood does dramatic orotherwise serious films is a myth Hollywood likes to drag out at theAcademy Awards. So if you're not making action films or comedies,you're not in Hollywood.

By the late '80s it was clear to everyone that African Americans (nowconstituting a sizable portion of regular movie audiences) were goingto have to be represented on film again. But by then it was also clearthat this audience wasn't going to tolerate being relegated to pimp andgang roles, at least not completely. For one thing, Eddie Murphy hadbroken the blaxploitation mold in 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop. Idon't think anybody realizes that Murphy's roles in these films are abasic blaxploitation stereotypes, because Murphy clearly wasn't goingto let himself be stereotyped. Murphy's popularity and savvy probablycaused more anxiety than the anger of Melvin Van Peebles or RichardPryor ever had, because it was clear that he was there to make money,something Hollywood could really understand.

At any rate: In 1988 the Wayans produced I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, aknock-down parody of the blaxploitation genre that pretty much assuredthat it would never raise its afro-covered head again. But it was stillclear that African Americans needed a new action hero; so enter ActionJackson.

The reason why this film is not better remembered as the return of theblack action hero is clearly because of the script. This ispaint-by-numbers formula movie-making; this script has been written andfilmed a hundred times, and every action star in Hollywood has appearedin some version of it, all of the Baldwin brothers in turn, SlyStallone, Kirk Russell, Seagal, Schwarzenegger, Brandon Lee – I'm surethe reader can fill in the titles of each actor's version, regardlesshow unmemorable the films may have been. This formula was a kind ofrite-of-passage for anyone wanting to make action films in the late'80s – early '90s. So why not Carl Weathers?

Actually, Weathers' performance in this film is quite good. It's hardto come up with a bone-breaking/rule-breaking cop who also happens tobe suave and savvy (think part Dirty Harry, part James Bond), butWeathers nearly pulls it off. The decision not to play him with a'black-english' accent and with no chip on his shoulder were exactlythe qualities needed to leave the whole blaxploitation question awayfrom the film at the time it was made. There are also some importantethnic transgressions here – we first find Vanity as the new mistressof the white bad-guy, whereas it's clear that Sharon stone's characterhas had a fling with Carl weathers'. Essentially, then, the filmportrays a fantasy Detroit, where racism has indeed become a thing ofthe past that its all but forgotten. If only that were really true!But, again, that was exactly what was needed to get African Americansback into action films – i.e., back into Hollywood.

The direction of the film is fairly tight. The characters are so twodimensional, it may not be noticeable but the performances are allpretty solid; the whole film is professionally produced and presented.Also, two years before everybody in America would discover who JackieChan was and that he came from somewhere called Hong Kong, there aresome terrific stunts in this film. And I noticed that other criticshave reported that both Sharon Stone and Vanity get naked in thismovie; frankly, I find such comments tasteless. On the other hand,there's no denying the attraction some men will feel for such importantexamples of women taking proper care of their health.

But the main point is, the film should be preserved if for now otherreason, than because it was indeed the return to the mainstream of thestrong African-American male hero; and we still need that in thecinema, and always have.

Carl Weathers gets a chance to be an action hero in this very enjoyable80’saction movie. There are plenty of fist fights, explosions, car crashes,andother action in this one, and I thought Weathers did a good job in thisfilm. The scene when he outruns a cab and rides on the roof of it waskindadumb but still entertaining. Craig T. Nelson does a good job as the badguy. There are plenty of familiar faces in this one including SharonStone,Bill Duke, Ed O’Ross, Sonny Landham, and many more. In all, a recommendedfilm, not the best action film of the 80’s, but still a fun one.3.5/5

9) There isn't much to say about this movie. It's so stereo-type 80's it'sunreal! Carl Weathers (Rocky, Predator) plays Jericho 'Action' Jackson.Im just gonna leave it there because his name is just too damn awesome!This is full of explosions, fulls of fist fights, full of awful actingand one-liners and amazingly, has a half decent cast of big name 80'saction stars like Bill Duke and Sonny Landham (both of whom appeared inPredator with Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger), and Robert Davy (DieHard, Raw Deal, Predator 2). But the story is basically about Jackson,who has been demoted to a desk cop and hates it, and has to keep hisold 'Action Jackson' rebellious days behind him if he want's to bepromoted again. When he is trailing a sadistic businessman who ismurdering all his union competition so he can take the head job, thenyou know his 'Action Jackson' gun-ho days are going to return to savethe day! It really is fun, I recommend it completely.

10) I thought the first 2/3rds of this movie was alright as far as actionmovies comes. Nothing great, but decent entertainment. It had a cartoonfeel to it that I liked. That made it easier to overlook the otherwiseridiculous things like how cars exploded for no apparent reason andpeople could take several kicks and punches to the face with no effect.We got to see big man Jackson drop some funny one-liners, throw badguys through windows and jump-flip over a speeding car.

The end 3rd is were its gets sour for me. This is where Jackson and the"good" guys start killing of the bad guys. Example; Jackson and afriend has fought of a bunch of bad guys, now there's only one bad guyleft with a flamethrower. Jackson manages to disarm the bad guy, solets arrest him right? WRONG, lets drop a cool line and torch him! Andin the end he gets a promotion for his murdering spree. Before that hehas repeatedly been saying how Vanity is a junkie, like his murderingass is any better. Some real warped morals in this movie.