Action Movie of the Week- Action Jackson

So my attempt to keep constant content on the blog failed. I was just too busy with school to really be able to keep up with it. That being said I would still like to have more content on the blog than just the occasionally movie reviews. So we will start simple and work our way up by starting with an Action Movie of the Week post. This will be my attempt to indulge my masochistic tendencies of watching horrible action movies, hopefully I will be able to uncover a couple of gems and maybe induce a few laughs along the way. So lets get to it and and review this weeks film......Action Jackson.

  
After over a decade of playing the sidekick role in action films Carl Weather finally got his shot at a solo career with "Action Jackson" in 1988. He definitely seemed to fit the part after playing the charismatic Apollo Creed, he showed he had some acting ability and he had the muscle mass to back it up. Unfortunately like most action stars he made a very poor choice in what roles to accept. This would really be the only notable solo action film to his name and not a very good one at that.

"Action Jackson" tells the story of Detroit cop Jericho "Action" Jackson who is a local legend. He was a superstar athlete, graduated Harvard but decided he wanted to become a cop. He had been a lieutenant but was demoted after some big incident involving local businessman Peter Dellaplane's (Craig T. Nelson) son, after which his wife divorced him. But a series of murders of important auto union officials drag Jackson back into conflict with Mr. Dellaplane and "action" ensues.

Sharon Stone's tanning bed broke.....

This is one of the worst written action movies I have watched in a while. The film just sort of muddles around
for an hour and a half with a lot of exposition and then randomly will break out into some fighting scene. There were parts of this movie that I honestly had no clue what was going on, and I usually can pick up on the most confusing of story lines. I later discovered that I was WAY over thinking it because there really is not any plot beyond what I wrote in the paragraph above. The bad guy is murdering some people because he is bad and then he captures the good guy because he doesn't like him and then at the end the bad guy dies. That is the plot in preschool terms which is about at what level the writers of the screenplay can write at.

Action Jackson's most challenging adversary?

So the writing was pretty terrible but what about the action scenes? Well sadly those are not that thrilling either. While the film may be titled "Action Jackson" the action is actually pretty tame except for a few hilariously inept sequences. Apparently "Action Jackson" is supposed to be some sort of super human who can outrun cars, jump out of 3 story buildings but somehow Craig T. Nelson can kick his ass with really horrible martial arts? The end fight sequence is probably the funniest sequence in the whole movie because it is so awkward and forced but even that is not very memorable. 
 

So was there anything that I did like about the movie? Well as I previously stated the action sequences were hilariously bad, Carl Weathers had a few funny one liners and there was also a fare amount of nudity from the leading lady played by model/singer Vanity. Unfortunately outside of those two things there is really not much to like about "Action Jackson".

Carl Weathers is Pissed Off!

MY RATING 

2 out of 5 

Chris "Da Franchize" Hart