"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Action Jackson

Every once in a while I’ll get in a gentlemanly argument with a motherfucker about whether Michael Bay single-handedly ruined the future of action cinema forever, or whether he’s just an asshole. And invariably a Bay-defender will claim that although his movies are not fun to watch and you don’t know what’s going on while you watch them, Michael Bay “blows things up real good.” I think the idea is supposed to be that Regular Folk like to watch a big fiery explosion with no brains involved and if you got a problem with that you must be some kind of snob.

Well I am not a snob and I think you guys know that. The problem is that in my opinion he DOES NOT blow things up good. He blows things up and then by the camera placement and quick cuts forces us to wonder whether we are in fact watching an explosion or a closeup of Billy Bob Thornton’s shoe or perhaps the reflection off a bead of sweat dripping down Josh Hartnett’s adam’s apple.

So let me tell you who blows things up good: Craig R. Baxley. He’s a stunt co-ordinator (he did THE WARRIORS) turned director. He first directed on THE DUKES OF HAZZARD but ACTION JACKSON is his first theatrical work.

Action JacksonCarl Weathers plays Jericho “Action” Jackson, a Detroit police sergeant recently demoted from Lietenant. Why was he demoted? BECAUSE HE RIPPED A GUY’S ARM OFF. That is how you know this is gonna be at least an okay movie. Even better, he defends his action by saying, “He had a spare.” The bad guy is the one-armed man’s dad, Craig T. Nelson from COACH, and you know he’s a bad guy because he’s got Al Leong (DIE HARD) as his limo driver. Just like you know Action is a cop because he has Bill Duke as his boss.

The story is generic ’80s cop movie shit: Action thinks that the rich auto manufacturer father of the sex maniac whose arm he ripped off is assassinating union bosses, so he teams up with the guy’s wife (Sharon Stone, ABOVE THE LAW) and his junkie mistress (Vanity) to investigate. Then he gets framed for murder, etc. etc.

All that’s kind of boring, and it’s a little disappointing that we never get to see him face down the one-armed sex maniac. (Maybe they were saving that for part 2.) But the movie is completely worthwhile for its peppering of pure Baxleyism.

My first exposure to Baxley as a director was STONE COLD starring Brian Bosworth. I remember a part in there where a motorcycle flies out a window. Alot of directors would’ve stopped right there. But he has the motorcycle collide with a helicopter. That’s awesome, you can’t get any better than that, can you? Well, yes, because then the helicopter crashes and lands on a car, and the car blows up. That’s Baxley for you, he’s a second unit director turned first unit. So he’s always looking for ways to juice up the action. In the opening scene of ACTION JACKSON some thugs come to murder a union boss. In this scene alone there is more glass broken than in any Seagal movie save for THE GLIMMER MAN. And at the end of the scene they shoot the guy with some kind of explosive shell, and he catches on fire. And then he falls out the window. And he plummets from a skyscraper, on fire, and lands on a table where some people are having dinner below. (somebody could’ve said, “Be careful, the plate is hot.”)

Those type of touches aren’t non-stop, unfortunately. Action has to do some investigating and what not. In fact, there was a point almost halfway through the movie where I started thinking I don’t know, for a guy called Action Jackson he sure doesn’t see alot of action. As soon as I thought it, Vanity asked him, “Hey, why do they call you–” and just then a guy tries to run over Action in a taxi cab.

This leads to what I believe is the first ever high speed car chase where the guy chasing forgot to bring a car. Action Jackson runs after the guy and manages to keep up for several blocks. Then he climbs onto a parked car and does a spectacular flying leap onto the taxi, leading to the standard T.J. Hooker “holding onto the top of the bad guy car” routine. (Unlike T.J. Hooker, Action Jackson states out loud that it was probaly a bad idea.) When the car finally stops he shames the driver into trying to run him over instead of just shooting him. That’s a brilliant stroke because what he does is run up the front of the car and do a flip off of the car. The driver takes his eye off the road to figure out what the hell just happened and when he turns back he’s about to crash into a parked car. And like many movies of this type, instead of trying to steer away or hit the brakes, he just holds his hands up to cover his face. A total quitter. Anyway, his car launches into the air, spins, crashes into the side of a garage, tears through the wall, and crushes a couple of cars inside the garage. (Sadly, it does not explode. But I guarantee you Baxley tried. There must’ve been a safety issue or something.)

The climax of the movie takes place at a big party held at the bad guy’s mansion. There is a guy swinging on a string of Christmas lights. There is a guy impaled. There are some knifings. Action finds out that Craig T. Nelson has Vanity at gunpoint in his bedroom, so he has to act fast. Instead of wasting time by running up the stairs, Action steals the Ferrari-like car that this guy manufacturers, and rams it into the house. Then he drives the car up the stairs and into the guy’s bedroom. This is the closest we will ever see to a movie where a sitcom star is run over in his own bedroom. But Action gets out and fights Craig T. hand-to-hand. It’s okay, because the car is still there the whole time. It’s still weird to have a fight in a bedroom if there’s a car parked there.

Craig T. Nelson makes a pretty good bad guy. He’s mostly the rich asshole type but in order to have a fight scene at the end there is one scene earlier to establish that he knows how to fight. He’s at home sparring with a young, muscular Asian guy, so you figure he is having his martial arts lesson. But you figure wrong. After he defeats the guy he says “Lesson’s over” and walks away. I guess you could argue that he is better than his teacher but I assume this is supposed to mean that he actually is a martial arts teacher in his spare time. I guess either way is pretty cool.

Sharon Stone is okay, she gets more to do than in ABOVE THE LAW where she just whines and cries. Contrary to what some dude said on IMDb, she does not get naked in this one. Vanity does get naked and shoot up, if you’re into that. She is more the female lead in this one. She also performs a couple songs but one thing I have noticed, she was not as good without Prince. I don’t want to be controversial but in my opinion Prince was the real talent behind that whole deal.

Alot of people enjoy bad puns and one-liners in their ’80s action movies and if that’s what you’re into, there is plenty to offer here. And I mean I’m talking terrible one-liners. The worst is probaly when Vanity’s huge bodyguard appears out of nowhere to rescue Action Jackson. He jumps down from a catwalk and says, “Hello, I’m Mr. Ed!”

What the hell does that mean? It doesn’t make any sense as a pun, as a literal statement, even as a reference. What does a big bodyguard dude have to do with a talking horse? A total non-sequitur.

Another one I don’t get, in the same scene Action Jackson says, “Chill out,” and then blowtorches a guy. How does that work? You can’t say the opposite of what you’re doing, that doesn’t count as a pun. Later he does a better job when he says, “Barbecue, huh? How do you like your ribs?”

(Alot of people catch on fire in this movie, by the way. It’s the kind of thing where if you bump into some electrical equipment you will immediately burst into flames.)

Baxley was even better by the time of STONE COLD (his third movie) but I liked this one too.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Action, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

19 Responses to “Action Jackson”

  1. I just finished watching this flick and I really like it. The best part of it is how they establish jackson being so dangerous to a perp and when the perp sees him he faints. Almost every time he sees hím.
    It also is good for the audience, because it´s a buildup. You never get to see what he was like before he got demoted. You only get to hear how bad ass he is. So you get hyped. Like “When are we going to get some Action?!” And he delivers. He throws a guy thru the window and into the window of the adjacent building. Good stuff.
    I also like Craig T.Nelson in this. the kind of EVIL dude that noone else in this day and age would portray a character. Too bad in my opinion. Action movies should be like rock music, effective dumb loud entertainment. ( Well, a little brain wouldn´t hurt….)

    I like Baxley´s work a lot. I really like STONE COLD and the extremely underrated SNIPER 2. He seems to be mainly doing TV nowadays. I think he directed an episode of HUMAN TARGET. i probably should check that show out.

  2. You do too see Sharon Stone naked in this one, Vern.

    Vanity is a 10 as long as she’s not singing.

    The first half of this movie, I did a lot of “Hey, he was in DIE HARD, too!” and “Hey, he was in PREDATOR, too!”

    The world is ready for another Carl Weathers movie in which he either loses or removes an arm.

  3. barbecue huh? HOW DO YA LIKE YA RIBS!?

  4. Caught this one on cable again- it was simultaneously better and worse than I remember. As you guys mentioned, there’s a curious lack of action/bad pacing near the beginning, but the fight scenes are pretty well-done and hard-hitting. It also has the same problem that alot of movies do where the invincible ninja-like hit squad from the beginning turns out to be really easy to kill by the end. And I’m not sure what to think of the fact that Jackson gets the ENTIRE assassin plot explained to him by a barbershop lady. I’m guessing it was supposed to be a parody of exposition scenes but it came across as lazy writing.

    Btw, what happened to gratuitous shower scenes? I like how Sharon Stone has one here that literally has nothing to do with anything other than to show her naked. She’s actually kind of an interesting character you wouldn’t see in most action movies, so it’s too bad she exits so soon. Vanity is also a pretty unusual character too and probably the first “junkie” character I remember seeing as a kid. To have a drug addict be a) actually sympathetic and b) the main love interest, not the B-girl who dies, was pretty unexpected.

    Oh and I totally thought the “Hi, I’m Mr. Ed!” was a non-sequiter as well, but on last watch, I realized the character’s name actually is Ed, and Vanity and Craig T. Nelson call him “Ed” several times just so we’ll remember that’s his name to set up the one-liner (it obviously didn’t work).

    Anyway, it’s a fun upper-tier entry in the Joel Silver Players collection, and I would totally love a prequel that ends with him ripping that guy’s arm off.

  5. The whole video renting world loved this movie, but I’m not quite sure why…

  6. Just announced on Facebook, coming to Blu-Ray from Warner Archive.

  7. Hey Vern, Read the Action Jackson and Stone Cold reviews you wrote. Loved’em. stephen king and a couple friends suggested I write my memoirs, almost finished. I was curious if I could use you reviews. If not, no worries.
    Thanks again for the kind words.

    Bax

  8. Holy shit, you guys.

  9. Of course you can! It would be an honor! I’m glad to hear you took their advice and I look forward to reading it!

  10. Oh my God. Do you know how much I want to read about Stone Cold? Like a lot.

  11. Cool…saw this one recently. It’s kind of okay. There are some amazing stunts, like the opening where the guy is blown out the window on fire, that whole sequence was cool. And stuff like the guy going from one window to the other. Problem is the movie had to be a typical shitty 80s cop flick with mostly bad one liners. I would have LOVED to see the gritty version of this, with Jackson being more of a loner private eye or something. Cops doing their thing as the boss yells and they get demoted and go to the office…dull as fuck. Someone mentioned the assassins suddenly becoming punks, I agree there too. ALL of that buildup, then they just end up being typical thugs there to get killed easily and Jackson can make an unfunny crack about it like a sociopath who doesn’t give a shit about all the people he’s killing. Decent, but I would have loved to see Weathers star in an action movie worthy of him.

  12. Didn’t Baxley direct a lot of the Predator shoot-out? Now THAT was amazing work. It’s just stunt after stunt after stunt. No one dies before being set on fire first. No one stages bodies on fire flying through the air in slo motion better!

  13. This is the second movie where Craig T. Nelson plays a character who is an unlikely martial artist. The first was THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, in which he plays a Hollywood screenwriter and martial artist. His wife is a professional martial artist. Maybe that’s the connection. Sadly, he’s a bit of a right-winger. Once he was on Fox News saying “I was on welfare, I was on food stamps, and nobody ever helped me out,” which was odd. Oh well, he made a believable Peter Dellaplane, at least.

  14. RIP Carl Weathers. Any career that has Apollo Creed, PREDATOR, HAPPY GILMORE, and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT constitutes a formidable legacy. He didn’t NEED to be Action Jackson to be a legend. But here’s the thing: He WAS Action Jackson. Nobody else was or ever will be. That’s like a legacy stacked on top of another legacy dancing to James Brown in American flag shorts. Then that legacy helps the other legacy up using the Predator handshake and rips that legacy’s arm off, but it’s okay because he had a spare. Now THAT’s a career. That’s how you get a stew goin’.

  15. Well said! Both ROCKY & PREDATOR were star vehicles for other actors, and yet one simply cannot imagine them without Carl Weathers. Both Apollo and Dillon could have just turned out to be Plain Ole Assholes…but Weathers located the depth and human frailty within them and gave you real characters.

    RIP the one and only Action Jackson

  16. Very grateful for this man’s life and his many delightful and original characters. How many people can play professional football, beat Rocky Balboa, wrestle with alligators, battle empires, and teach Tobias Funke the fundamentals of acting without spending any of his per diem? Also, that is definitely him actually singing “We’ve Only Just Begun,” and his voice is velvety magic.

  17. RIP to one badass motherfucker. Few men could put their muscles next to 80s Schwarzenegger and Stallone and look like equals, and of those few no other had the charisma or swagger that Carl Weathers brought. The Predator handshake alone is legendary. I am a sucker for any famous person willing to skewer their image or look ridiculous, and Weathers as “himself” on Arrested Development was one of my favorites. I literally just laughed out loud remembering some of his scenes, time to find a youtube compilation.

    I guess I need to watch Action Jackson for the first time now. Too bad i just realized the multi-DVD pack I bought with it is all Fullscreen versions (that was also how I was gonna watch The Last Boyscout for the first time, dammit!).

  18. That full-frame transfer plagued me for years, but Warners finally put out a barebones Blu-ray a few years back. Still waiting on the Vinegar Syndrome deluxe special edition that it deserves.

    LAST BOY SCOUT feels like more of a Kino Lorber thing but it also deserves better than it’s gotten.

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