IMDb user comments for
Action Jackson (1988) More at IMDbPro »

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 4:

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Index

37 comments in total

---

18 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
"Action Jackson" is a competently standard showcase for Carl Weathers' superhero cool…, 18 May 2008

Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico

Action is a proud man, a high-school track star, a dedicated cop, a sergeant who lost his lieutenant's stripes almost two years ago…

He jostles a conceited, two-faced, backstabbing mass murderer called Peter Dellaplane (Craig T. Nelson). Director Craig R. Baxley has not only carried it off, but makes you believe it… One must also give some of the credit to Carl Weathers whose erect muscular body and his charm and 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 to prison… She thinks that he may seem greedy and arrogant but he remained loved by everyone, and the whole experience changed him… She also thinks that Jackson is not so different from her husband, that both are stubborn, and both intent on getting what they want…

---

10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Lives up to its title., 7 October 2002

Author: gridoon

The violence in this movie is brutal and efficiently directed, the action sequences 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. In short, "Action Jackson" has all the ingredients to be a good rental choice for action fans. If only they had avoided some of those needless digressions (like Jackson's fight with a junkie).... (**1/2)

---

5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the Best '80s Action Flicks!, 21 May 2002

Author: dgordon-1 from Toronto, Canada

When I saw this movie back in 1988, I thought then & think now that it was one of the most action packed movies for this genre. Carl Weathers plays a likable cop that goes after an unscrupulous high-end car manufacturer. All of the characters, Vanity, Craig T. Nelson & Sharon Stone round out the cast nicely to make an enjoyable, action packed viewing experience for the 1h30m that it's on. It wasn't mean't to be an academy award winner, but it set out to do what it was intended to do, and that's to be an action packed movie 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 glad to see it on DVD, because I have played my VHS copy to the max!

---

10 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Great Late 80's Action Film That's A lot Of Fun! Just Check Your Brain At The Door!*Spoilers*, 13 January 2005

Author: (callanvass@hotmail.com) from victoria b.c canada

Great late 80's Action Film that's a lot of fun!. The characters were all great, Especially Weather's and Vanity's characters. The Main villain was VERY menacing in Craig T. Nelson he does fabulous here. There is lots of action, and lots of funny one liners from Carl Weathers!. This has been Panned by a lot of people why? it's a lot of fun 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 camera angles and overall he did a good job!. There is a bit of blood and violence. 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 very bloody gunshot wounds, impaling, and someone gets hit by a car graphically. The Acting is great!. Carl Weathers is AWESOME here delivering those one liners like a champ, he had good chemistry with Vanity and overall he just entertained the hell out of me! and was perfect 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 is very menacing and did a terrific job overall!. Vanity is GORGEOUS! and did surprisingly very well here i liked her a lot. Sharon Stone is STUNNINGLY GORGEOUS! and does good here too too bad she is rather wasted!. Robert Davi, Ed O'Ross, Mary Ellen Trainor, and Nicholas Worth are all good in there short roles. Overall i highly recommend this for a night of cheesy fun!. ***1/2 out of 5 (Barely)

---

3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Would anyone like a bowl of macaroni and CHEESE?, 16 November 2003
Author: perni from Owensboro, KY

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Did you get my joke? No? Well then let me explain it to you cretins out there who have never indulged in bad cinema. Mike Nelson, the genius who wrote for and hosted the insanely brilliant series Mystery Science Theatre 3000, published a book all about wonderfully cheesy movies that he liked to watch. Action Jackson was just one of those movies, and I am glad to say that 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 critic calls 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 my all-time favorite foods is macaroni and cheese! Sure, we all like to pretend that we have refined tastes, munching on caviar and other such sophisticated vittles, but every now and then we just have to let our hair down and have a nice slice of good American cheese. And trust me folks, Action Jackson, is just dripping with the stuff. Just look at the plot: A former lieutenant known 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 and refuses to let our hero see some "action" until he shapes up (check). Then suddenly a new case opens up - it seems that the same man who cost Action Jackson's lieutenant position is up to his old tricks, but no one suspects him because he's a respected businessman (check). Will Action Jackson uncover the villain's dastardly plot, save the day, get the chick who he at first 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 still simple, dorky fun. Action Jackson is played by the man who trained Sylvesyer Stallone in the original Rocky, and Craig "Coach" T. Nelson himself is the bad guy. And to top it all off, VANITY is the romantic love interest! I could not believe it when her named popped up on the screen. Now I own two movies starring this horrible actress: Today's feature, and the John Stamos spy disaster, Never Too Young To Die. What a small world, huh? There are explosions, car chases, groovy 80s tunes, and even a hotel manager whose lisp is so obvious that you can't understand a word he says. How can you go wrong? 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-movie for those rainy days.

---

5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
the return of the black action hero, 26 June 2006

Author: (winner55) from United States

I did a quick search on the internet to see if my memory served me right, and apparently it has. By 1981, the Blaxploitation action film was exhausted. - Although Fred Williamson had made a couple of action films in the mid-'80s, these don't really count, because Williamson can't act and can't direct.

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

One of the problems had been that people critical of blaxploitation had missed the fact that Hollywood only does two type of films with any regularity, the action film (Western, Sci-Fi, crime, etc.) and the sit-com (domestic comedy). The notion that Hollywood does dramatic or otherwise serious films is a myth Hollywood likes to drag out at the Academy 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 (now constituting a sizable portion of regular movie audiences) were going to have to be represented on film again. But by then it was also clear that this audience wasn't going to tolerate being relegated to pimp and gang roles, at least not completely. For one thing, Eddie Murphy had broken the blaxploitation mold in 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop. I don't think anybody realizes that Murphy's roles in these films are a basic blaxploitation stereotypes, because Murphy clearly wasn't going to let himself be stereotyped. Murphy's popularity and savvy probably caused more anxiety than the anger of Melvin Van Peebles or Richard Pryor 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, a knock-down parody of the blaxploitation genre that pretty much assured that it would never raise its afro-covered head again. But it was still clear that African Americans needed a new action hero; so enter Action Jackson.

The reason why this film is not better remembered as the return of the black action hero is clearly because of the script. This is paint-by-numbers formula movie-making; this script has been written and filmed a hundred times, and every action star in Hollywood has appeared in some version of it, all of the Baldwin brothers in turn, Sly Stallone, Kirk Russell, Seagal, Schwarzenegger, Brandon Lee - I'm sure the reader can fill in the titles of each actor's version, regardless how unmemorable the films may have been. This formula was a kind of rite-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 hard to come up with a bone-breaking/rule-breaking cop who also happens to be suave and savvy (think part Dirty Harry, part James Bond), but Weathers nearly pulls it off. The decision not to play him with a 'black-english' accent and with no chip on his shoulder were exactly the qualities needed to leave the whole blaxploitation question away from the film at the time it was made. There are also some important ethnic transgressions here - we first find Vanity as the new mistress of the white bad-guy, whereas it's clear that Sharon stone's character has had a fling with Carl weathers'. Essentially, then, the film portrays a fantasy Detroit, where racism has indeed become a thing of the past that its all but forgotten. If only that were really true! But, again, that was exactly what was needed to get African Americans back into action films - i.e., back into Hollywood.

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

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

---

2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Great 80s Fun, 4 December 2006

Author: reverendtom from Santa Cruz, CA

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

---

4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
not a bad movie, 6 May 2003

Author: shakey_jake53 from Toronto, Ontario

Carl Weathers gets a chance to be an action hero in this very enjoyable 80's action movie. There are plenty of fist fights, explosions, car crashes, and other action in this one, and I thought Weathers did a good job in this film. The scene when he outruns a cab and rides on the roof of it was kinda dumb but still entertaining. Craig T. Nelson does a good job as the bad guy. There are plenty of familiar faces in this one including Sharon Stone, Bill Duke, Ed O'Ross, Sonny Landham, and many more. In all, a recommended film, not the best action film of the 80's, but still a fun one. 3.5/5

---

1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
So bad it's good! Classic 80's nonsense!, 24 September 2008

Author: bazthegreatone from United Kingdom

There isn't much to say about this movie. It's so stereo-type 80's it's unreal! 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 acting and one-liners and amazingly, has a half decent cast of big name 80's action stars like Bill Duke and Sonny Landham (both of whom appeared in Predator with Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger), and Robert Davy (Die Hard, 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 his old 'Action Jackson' rebellious days behind him if he want's to be promoted again. When he is trailing a sadistic businessman who is murdering all his union competition so he can take the head job, then you know his 'Action Jackson' gun-ho days are going to return to save the day! It really is fun, I recommend it completely.

---

6 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
If action had a name it would be ACTION.... Jackson!, 21 July 1999

Author: ross harrison (soccer@istar.ca) from Ottawa, Canada

Some say he didn't even have a mother and he was created by NASA to be the first man to walk on the moon without a space suit, others say his mother was molested by a Yeti and he was their mutant offspring... Well their all wrong he's actually just the most bad ass cop in all of Mo-Town. And he's out to kick some serious posterior on Martial Arts, Gang Lord Craig T. Nelson (ABC's Coach) and his gang of Euro- Trash 80's Super Assigns. Carl Weathers is "Action" Jackson the Cop so bad the that he can beat the living cheese out of the crooks so badly that their ancestors will feel it 12 centuries from now. He knocks a giant fat guy through a door! He throws some guy out a window with such force that the sorry punk flies through the window of the building on the other side of the alleyway! He destroys a cab by flipping over it for Pete's Sake!!! Why do they call him Action? Do the Math Brainiac!!! SEE IT!!!

---

---

Page 1 of 4:

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Add another comment

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Amazon.com summary	Ratings
Awards	Newsgroup reviews	External reviews
Plot keywords	Main details	Your user comments
Your vote history