Viewed in
2013
Formats
HDTV
Premise
Carl Weathers stars as a badass cop in Detroit.
Liked
The unintentional comedy.
Disliked
Most of it.
Thoughts
Meh. You'd hope a cop flick with Apollo Creed would be fun, but sadly not the case.
The good things were: seeing Vanity and Sharon Stone's boobs, driving a sports car through a mansion interior, semi-ninjas who were cool for the first two-thirds of the story, and occasional moments when Weathers was actually owned the screen.
Now let's go through the checklist of not good/original: a badass black cop with attitude, a superior who's had it "up to here" with our hero's shenanigans, an antagonist who's evil to the bone, a mistress who will fall for our hero, a car chase through the streets with our hero on the roof, a dude gets electrocuted crashing into a giant computer? All check. I was shocked the car didn't run through a fruit stand and that Weathers wasn't forced to turn in his badge.
Another thing that made the movie boring was the writing. The dialog was on-the-nose, bland, and full of cussing for cussing's sake (it was an '80's flick).
But enough boring stuff, let's get to the nonsensical stuff, such as: Weathers catching a runaway cab on foot, ninja mercs who can Seal Team 6 it for the majority of the plot but can't sense a sumo-sized bodyguard sneaking up on them, a song with the lyrics "Can you kiss me?/Baby undress me", Craig T. Nelson sporting a space-age heroin needle that looked like the syringe from Dark City.
Lastly, I don't know what was weirder: the furry alien residing on Nelson's forehead pretending to be his eyebrows or that Herbie Hancock and Michael Kamen composed the score.
Unless you really really really love Carl Weathers, it's safe to stay clear of this ho-hum Shaft-wannabe. As an action flick, Action Jackson unfortunately did not deserve such a cool title.
