Two buck video time!

ACTION JACKSON

D: Craig R Baxley 1988

From the producers of Predator & Lethal Weapon! screams the video slick so you know what you’re in for.  Yes, it’s Carl Weathers as the mofo one man army “I don’t play by the rules” cop with a chip on his shoulder, the slick one liners and the personal vendetta against the bad guy.  Trouble is the bad guy is played by Craig T Nelson and it’s kinda hard to take good ol Craig T seriously.  Not sure if Craig is playing a cold hearted bastard or if it’s that his acting is so tv movie of the week that he just appears emotionless.  Big budget action movie like this and they couldn’t get Gary Busey or even Wings Hauser?  What is the world coming to?

So the movie starts with some poor union schmuck workin’ late with his secretary (no he really is working!) when they get they’re asses kicked by a big budget ninja white boy gang who come in thru the windows and send the schmuck out as toast!  Said ninjas of course consisting of a cool unkillable black guy, a guy with an incredibly bad mullet, the guy who looks like Huey Lewis and a token just plain ugly white cracker. 

Craig T plays a car manufacturer/rich bastard by the name of Peter Dellaplane who is knocking off the union guys from the AWA who aren’t on his side.  See, he’s got his eye on the presidency.  He doesn’t want the throne, he wants to be the power behind the throne.  So he’s killing off the guys who get in his way.  Our man Action Jackson is in his way.  Jackson got demoted to desk sergeant after he roughed up Dellaplane’s psycho shitdick sexual deviant son during an arrest.  We know Action is cool when we hear this conversation with his captain.

“You nearly tore that boy’s arm off!” “So?  He had a spare.” 

Damn, they don’t write ‘em like that anymore.  Anyways, good ol Craig has married Sharon Stone and is porking Vanity on the side.  Tough life Craig.  Action gets in the way of course but not until the girls get the puppies out for a walk.   Shazza, after overhearing a conversation about a dead union guy, goes to Action to tell him about it and seek his advice.  She knows her Craig T is a good guy deep down, honest.  She is of course wrong and they both nearly get run down by a cab driven by cool unkillable black guy.  Cue Action Jackson jumping on top of cab and shootings and car crash and black guy getting away.  Least now we know that Action deserves his nickname.   Oh yeah, Vanity does what she does best, look sultry, sing bad 80s drek and take her top off. 

Jackson of course hooks up with her but meanwhile Craig T has shot Shazza and dumped her nekkid corpse at Jackson’s place.  So now Jackson has the cops after him for murder, Craig T after him just because and he’s stuck with a talentless junkie with no brains and no sign of the poisoned dwarf to at least provide her with a decent song. 

So we end up, after a bit of biffo and a few one liners ‘tween our hero and our junkie with the nice tits, at a big party at Craig T’s place where the cool unkillable black guy is gonna off a union boss and make it look like Action Jackson is responsible.  But Action has a new offsider in Vanity’s bodyguard who turns up in the nick of time and saves Action from being burnt to a crisp and the boys then toast the mullet guy and the ugly guy and eventually even Huey Lewis, but I mean come on how hard can it be to kill Huey?  Should have just played his records back to him!  Even the cool unkillable black guy finally gets it, though I have to admit I was disappointed in how easy it was in the end.  Never fear though because we still got the big showdown ‘tween Craig T and Action going mano o mano where finally Carl remembers where he got his start and he gets all Apollo Creed on Craig’s ass.  The good guys win, the bad guys are all dead, Jackson gets his old job back and he whisks Vanity away for a night of cold sweats and withdrawal blues.

Carl ain’t no Richard Roundtree, hell he ain’t even Danny Glover but what the fuck, he did what he had to do and that’s all you can ask.  And he sure as shit out acted Craig T and Vanity but then that’s not saying much is it?   Oh yeah I should mention the oriental guy with the droopy mustache and that awful balding at the front, long at the back cut who’s in all these movies too.  Who is that guy anyway?

He's all action!