Action Jackson transcript
Season 2 · Episode 25. Generated automatically, so expect the odd misheard word.
Hey, you're listening to the worst movie podcast. I'm A Day.
I'm Aaron. This week we're talking about Action Jackson from 1988.
Carl Weathers. Enjoy. So, Aaron, what what have you been watching lately?
Uh I'm still binge watching The Wire. I'm I just started season four.
Ooh, awesome. Uh like just just started it.
Uh yeah. Um I think we just finished the first episode last night of season four. Uh that's uh with Snoop and the uh nail gun.
Yeah. Uh and I should remember this, but uh is this your first time through? You saw it.
I've seen I've seen at least all five seasons once. Okay. I've seen the first two seasons a bunch of times. I usually get through the second season, and then that's that's when my brain tells me I need something else in my life.
And you don't you don't want to just be living in the despair of Baltimore show at times. Yeah.
The futility of it all.
Yeah, here are all the problems we have in society. No answers.
Yep. Uh or here's answers, but our own pettiness and uh political career making is gonna ruin what could be a good thing for society. Right.
Um season four is started. You want to just talk about politics though? This whole episode?
It is uh politics season.
Uh that is true. Maybe we can get a sponsor. Yeah. Uh yeah, season four is my favorite by far.
Yeah, I remember really liking this season. I loved three too with uh with Bunny and the safe zone and and uh Omar and Stringer and Yeah, they're all good. How can you go wrong with any season? I was telling Amanda last night that even though like you said, season two when it came out wasn't loved by critics. I love it. Like it it's one of my favorite seasons.
Yeah. Yeah, I think season five is probably my least favorite because it f felt a little bit rushed. I think they got uh they got cancelled or like the but you know, the their budget got cut or something like that, where they I think it's only ten episodes instead of thirteen on the fifth season. You can kind of feel it, but Oh.
I don't remember the fifth season well enough, so maybe it maybe I feel the same way. It didn't leave that much of an impression on me.
Yeah. I I think it's uh just crazy too how I w I don't think we'll be in that era for a while where it didn't have much of a viewership until uh after it left the air that like it could survive five seasons. It's pretty amazing.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's as many season well, there were a lot more episodes in Breaking Bad though, I believe. Yeah. They were doing closer to twenty episodes at season, I think, weren't they?
That seems high, but does it?
I don't remember.
What are you watching? I'm gonna zig a little bit, and my watching now is actually a novel. Can I do that? Uh I just read John Green's new new novel, Hollywood Ending.
You're so pretentious.
Your risks. I should have done with your novels. With your fiction. Uh I I think it qualifies because it's it's a novel about Hollywood and it follows have you read anything about it? It follows two young actors and uh it's a lot of the ins and outs of their life in Hollywood, at least for this period of time. And um yeah, I I I think it's I think it's appropriate for a movie podcast to talk about a novel about movies.
What uh what kind of ins and outs did you get an inside look at?
Uh they watch a lot of movies and they talk a lot about a lot of movies. They actually talk in the novel about liking bad movies and why they like bad movies, um which is kind of fun. Uh I think one of the characters talks about how when you watch a good movie, you're just lost in the movie. But when you watch a bad movie, it reveals all sorts of technicalities that went wrong. Uh they're like, oh, you can tell that the director wanted this shot, but couldn't couldn't get it because probably something happened in the coverage, and so they had to do like a tight shot or something, or it was edited this way. And so it gets into a lot like criticizing a lot of the technical stuff about movies.
Uh yeah. And you get to see how Hollywood would solve a problem if they had no money to throw at it.
Right. Exactly. Uh the novel, this isn't a spoiler or anything, but it also talks a lot about just the business behind uh, especially in in the context you're releasing, releasing a movie and all the paparazzi stuff and the junkets and um yeah, that that mess of it. And it did make me appreciate it because sometimes I'm sure we've talked about it here on the show, where it's like, oh, whatever happened to so and so, why didn't they like we'll talk about Carl Carl Weathers and one of my first questions was like, oh, why why wasn't he a bigger, you know, leading man? And it's like it probably has nothing to do with the movies. It probably has to do with like some executive somewhere deciding this or that, and like he didn't want to do this thing, or he did want to do this thing that his agent told him to do. And it's just like all those reasons behind the scene why somebody becomes a star or doesn't become a star.
Yeah. Or getting roped into a six movie contract with a shitty studio or something that puts your career back 10 years.
Yeah, yeah. Uh yeah, there's all that stuff that I think we know intellectually, but just probably don't appreciate in the moment. Um at least I don't. Like I'm watching a movie, I'm like, this movie good, this movie bad. Like you don't see all the shit that happens behind the scenes.
Yeah.
Great point.
Well, John Green, if you want to come on the podcast and talk bad movies.
Yeah, yeah. I I highly recommend the novel. I'd I give it five stars out of five on my my goodreads. So um nice. Really enjoyed it. What's it called again? Hollywood, comma ending. Nice. So you know, get the double meaning there.
Yeah, I got it. I just want to make sure, you know, because I've I've read enough books to uh get that.
Good, good, good. Uh um well, speaking of literature and bad movies. Yeah, let's talk about Action Jackson from 1998. Uh 88. Or yeah, 88. Uh, this is part of our month of bad 80s action movies. This movie got a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes. Budget of about 10 million, made about 20 million, the box office. So minor profit, but not the big blockbuster that uh Joel Silver was hoping for, the producer.
He produced like every big action movie of the 80s, it seems like.
Yeah, he did. I don't have the list in front of me, but yeah.
Predator, 48 hours, lethal weapon. Lethal weapon, yeah. Yeah. All of them.
Yeah. Um, and it sounded like he worked with Carl Weathers on Predator and was like, all right, let's go. This is a this is your vehicle. We're gonna turn you into the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Carl Weathers said that he had been wanting to do a black exploitation film while he was filming Predator and kind of came up with the idea. My favorite quote from him about it uh was he said um that he went to Joel Silver and told him about it, and he said, Well, why don't you put something together? And so Carl Weathers, while he was filming Predator, said that he create he said, I created the story and came up with this guy, or at least this title, Action Jackson. And Joel found a writer who wrote the screenplay, and that was it. I'm like, Yeah, this sounds I mean, after watching it, it's definitely a movie where it's like they came up with the name Action Jackson and they were like, okay, with story's not important, we got the name.
Yeah. Uh we yeah, we'll we'll get into the story a little bit later. Uh, because it it is, yeah, it's kind of funny. But um, what's your relationship with this movie? Had you heard about it before? Had you seen it?
I just knew the name Action Jackson. I'd never seen it or anything. Uh I mean I I liked Carl Weathers from Rocky and Predator, but um and of course arrested development. Uh but yeah, I hadn't seen this one. But I can't tell you the number of times I said, baby, you got a stew going in the middle of uh Action Jackson.
Uh yeah, I I don't know. I mean, I we've talked about this before. I mostly missed the 80s, like I didn't, and so I I feel like I knew the name Action Jackson. I couldn't have told you anything about this movie. Um I probably mostly know Carl Weathers from Arrested Development and just like stuff, you know, post uh the 80s and like had to go back. Like I think I've mentioned I only saw the original Predator like end to end for the first time in the last year. Like I think I'd just seen pieces on TV before. So um yeah, I mean I'd yeah, I lucky.
Yeah, you got to uh you got to see it brand new.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean you'd seen the clips. I you probably get the gist of it from what you've seen.
Yeah, sometimes it's hard to when so much has been memefied and all that. It's like uh yeah, it's more like, oh that's what that that's from, um more so than like enjoying it with fresh new eyes, but yeah.
Did you see Rocky as a kid?
I did see Rocky. I don't remember anything about Car Carl Weathers and Rocky. It's been so and I confuse a lot of the Rocky's because I think like a lot of the like that that group, like the 80s movies, I would have seen them on TV, and like a lot of times you're not you know, like you're not watching it from start to finish, and so like it's like a Rocky marathon or something like that.
And all cut up, yeah.
Yeah, and so it's like you know, you just start watching in the middle of whatever, Rocky III, and then like you come back later at night and it's like he's got a robot, you're like, what the fuck? There are robots in it? I don't I don't even know Rocky Five.
It's it's one of the later ones, maybe four. Uh he gives his kid like this robot uh butler for Christmas.
All right, we gotta hurry up and get to that. The sequel is month.
Yeah.
Uh yeah. So anyway, uh long story short. I I don't I didn't know much about Carl Weathers or have much appreciation for for him. Yeah, that's fair. Uh Craig T. Nelson is in this, mostly named from Coach.
Same. I watched a lot of coach as a kid. Yeah. I'm not super familiar with Craig T. Nelson's career, to be honest, outside coach. Is he interesting enough to?
I was just looking at his uh at his IMDB. Um yeah, I feel like he's a legit actor. Like he's been in he's been in like a ton of stuff.
Um Do you like him generally? Do you like him?
And well, it's I uh it's funny because yeah, this is this is not a very educated analysis because I'm just like, yeah, that's coach. And um I'm looking through through his his uh resume and it's like, yeah, he's been in a lot of stuff, and I think he's I think he is a legit like good actor. Um it's hard to say if I like him or not. He's a villain in this, and he's a villain in other stuff I've seen him in, and so like devil's advocate, and so I don't like he seems like a good performer. Um he he doesn't have a lot of things.
He seems like the same character though. Like he doesn't have a lot of range.
Maybe. I I don't I'm not familiar enough with his work to say that, like, because I feel like he probably does. I don't even remember Coach that well. But like he got he got nominated for awards and stuff, so I assume he's not just like a one-note.
Yeah, but to me, like when I think of a really good actor, I think of like Gary Oldman, where he disappears into a role, or like um even like Robert Pattinson with all of his different voices and characters that he creates and everything, where it's like it's a different person every time you see a Robert Pattinson movie. Whereas it's always Craig T. Nelson, like is he's like he's coach in everything.
Yeah, I I feel like he's so uh I mean some of that I think is the acting, some of it is also just the like icon iconic nature of like your relationship to him being in that show. Like we watched, I don't know how many years coach was on. It was like, you know, four or five, ten years. I I don't even remember. But it's it's just it's hard. I mean, that's why so many actors get pigeonholed when they're in like a successful series. You're just like, oh, that's you know, that's Frazier, that's yeah, Ross and Rachel. You know, like you know, it's hard for a lot of TV actors to get out of that. And so I think you're always gonna see him on screen as like, oh, that's coach. Um so it's I mean it's very rare that you don't do that. Yeah, I I don't know. And I don't have I don't I clearly don't have like, oh, here are a dozen movies that I've seen Craig T. Nelson in at my fingertips to be like, well, here he plays, you know, a soft, sweet man, and then here he's this Gary Gary Gary Oldman. I mean, if Gary Oldman was on some TV series that I grew up with, like it'd be like, oh yeah, there's there's Joey, you know.
Uh but Gary Oldman's nine seasons of coach, by the way. Yeah, blows my mind.
It's also I I do wonder about that show because I remember enjoying it, but it can't have been like this. I mean, the whole thing was like, yeah, he's just a coach. Like, I don't remember so like so much I've forgotten about that show for I spending hours of my life.
I don't remember a single scene from that show that takes place outside of his office. Yeah.
Like the locker room.
Yeah. Yeah, with the really tall uh former player with the deep voice that is like his assistant.
Yeah, I couldn't tell you a single character name or storyline.
But I've probably watched hundreds of episodes.
Yeah, I I am also not a hundred percent sure whether he was a coach of a high school team or a college team.
I think it was college, like maybe Minnesota, University of Minnesota.
Like I said, I I feel about 80, 90% sure about that. But if you were like, no, it was it was high school, like you could convince me.
That's how crazy it is that I could be convinced too.
That I spent almost 10 years of my life watching the show. But yeah, I I haven't and I haven't seen a minute of that show since it went off the air.
It's like Avatar. It was it was there, it was big, and then the entire public forgot about it and it disappeared, and nobody cares. That's a terrible analogy.
Yeah, because they made two sequels of like billions of dollars.
They made nine uh seasons of coach. Nobody cares. We care, but keep watching it. That's as many as Seinfeld got.
Yeah.
It probably came on like right before Seinfeld.
Yeah.
I don't know.
That's probably why we watched it. We're just like waiting. It was an in-between. Uh I actually don't think it I don't think that's true. I think Coach was on CBS.
It felt like a daytime show. Was it a daytime show? Was that a prime time?
It had to have been a prime ABC. So it was on ABC.
Okay.
200 episodes.
I know. Crazy. I've probably seen half of them.
All right, we should move on from coach. This is we're losing our audience. Uh let's go back to Action Jackson. Do you want to give a quick synopsis?
Fuck, I closed my I closed the I was yeah, let me get my notes back up.
Just do it from memory. Uh it doesn't matter. The synopsis is the guy's name is Action Jackson. Yeah, where is it?
Yeah. Action Jackson vengeance drives a tough Detroit cop to stay on the trail of a power-hungry auto magnate who is systematically eliminating his competition. Don't need to know anything else.
Yeah, so can we let's let's start with the plot. I was so confused through it. Like, what is the plot? Like, what what what is what is coach trying to do? He's the villain in this.
Yes, he so he runs um a car company in Detroit making um it looks like just rip-off Ferraris. I don't know. But he's killing off all of these auto worker association people. They're like president. Yeah, he's killing off like union people. I don't know why.
Yeah, that's like I don't understand. And then at the end, he like gives the whole he's about to kill the good guy, and he does the exposition thing, or he's gonna tell him his whole plan. And he and he's like, no, this is bigger than what and I still didn't understand in that exposition. And Carl Weathers is like, you're gonna be so you're gonna be president, and he's like, No, even better than that, or whatever. Like, I still didn't understand what he was trying to do.
Yeah. I I I have no idea. I don't know what the plot is in this movie. I don't think it matters.
Well, clearly it doesn't matter because they they were like, all right, ship it.
The movie's done.
They even added exposition and and I I can't even I still can't understand it.
Yeah. Yeah, it's unfollowable.
Um it starts with a bonker scene, which of one of the first assassination we see, and it has to be like the least effective way to assassinate somebody.
Yes.
Uh these my first note was do these ninjas have superpowers? They keep disappearing. Like I I don't understand. And and I guess jumping ahead of like this is the hit squad for coach, right?
For yes, as far as I can Yeah, as far as I can tell, that he's got like a little personal hit squad.
Uh okay. That that helps a little bit because it it seemed like they just kind of pop in and pop out of the movie and they're a very convenient plot point. Right. So anyway, this first scene, there's a I don't even really understand what's going on after hours in this office with this guy and his secretary, I guess. I don't know. It seemed I I can't tell if he's if they're in a relationship, he's hitting on her, or they're actually working, or what's going on. But anyway, late at night in this skyscraper office, they see a helicopter, and I guess this hit squad takes a helicopter into downtown Detroit, repels down the skyscraper, like the whole scene of them busting in through the window, they immediately disappear, and then are hunting and then are hunting this guy throughout this office, like this cubicle maze and stuff like that. And they they keep they keep vanishing. I I don't understand.
It was like magic. Like he was looking at them and then it did a quick cut, and then they were just gone into smoke. Like it yeah, I don't know where they went. I was like, he was looking at them the whole time. He should know where they are, right?
Yeah, I was like, there's a supernatural element to this movie, right? And then we never returned to that, and so I was just like, wait, what what is this? Uh I don't know. And then they finally appear and then just fireball the guy out the window. You see his burning carcass falling 30 stories.
That was the funniest visual. Ever the clear dummy that's on fire. Yeah. Why was he so on fire, too? Yeah. Fully engulfed the whole way down.
Right. Um, anyway, that that's if if you were in charge of a hit squad and you get the report, they're like, We got Bob. And you're like, okay, what how did he go? And you and your hit squad told you that, wouldn't you just be like, you're fired? Like, why didn't you just kill them when you I mean, if you want to do the helicopter repel thing, that's fine. Yeah, just shoot him. Like there's gotta be so many easier ways.
I mean, that was that was a very popular 80s action movie trope of the extremely elaborate death. So like there's no reason that this evil uh corporate villain would want extremely public, visible murders of all of his enemies. He would want it to be as low-key as possible.
Right. That that's that's gonna be a huge like 60 minutes like investigation for sure.
Flaming body fell 40 stories tonight, landed on the sidewalk.
Yeah. Uh yeah, such and such tower has been shut down for months because they have to repair the structure.
Yeah, I mean, to kill another guy, they blew up the entire boat that he was on. Like just they just go onto the boat and shoot him and dump him overboard. They they're drawing so much attention to these murders.
Even better, uh, because I I made a few notes about this scene. They sneak onto the boat and the villain is listening to uh some classical music and uh and then they handcuff him to the bomb, and then it's this whole scene where he's like frantically trying to get out of the handcuff. Like, if you're gonna use a bomb, just throw the bomb on the boat and leave. Like, you don't need to torture the poor guy, and it just like you have to get through all this guy's bodyguards.
And now there's gonna be like handcuffs, evidence left behind, and like it's just introducing so many variables that yeah. Uh the dialogue in that scene was hilarious to me. I mean, the dialogue in this entire movie is insane. Yeah. Uh but um the guy who gets blown up is uh Grantham. He's one of the um union presidents of like a local chapter. But he's he gets a call from somebody asking about the boat, and he was like, Yeah, I got the place tidier than the Pope's poop shoot. And then like 10 seconds later, he yells out, You're interrupting an aria because of the classical music. I'm like, so the guy who says the Pope's poop shoot is also the guy that's that knows what an aria is. Yeah. And there was dialogue like that through the whole movie that is like these characters would not talk this way.
Uh the the aria guy's bodyguards were introduced to them as they're telling guy with no arms or legs jokes. Uh like the name of no guy of a guy with no arms and no legs on the front stoop, and it's Matt. Uh are those jokes okay to tell? Or or is that I don't know.
Probably.
I feel like I still remember being a little kid and hearing those jokes for the first time and just thinking those are hilarious.
Yeah. The what's the one one-legged woman named Eileen? What's that one? What's the one-legged woman named? Eileen?
Oh. I thought you were getting okay. I thought you were you were starting to say it. I didn't realize you'd said the whole joke.
Oh. Well, that was a dud. They don't work like they used to in fourth grade. I guess not. Uh yeah, and then um I like smart humor.
Well, that was smart humor for fourth grade. Yeah. Uh so yeah, we should talk a little bit about Carl Weathers and Action Jackson. One of the most the funniest things to me about the plot is like I actually this is one of the rare movies that we've watched where I was like, I actually think there's too much plot. There's it doesn't it doesn't make sense because they're trying to cram too much into it. And it's and they had to, it feels like they had to cut stuff out when when they release the movie, and so it just makes what's left nonsensical. Like they give Action Jackson so much backstory. We first meet him and his interaction with Craig T. Nelson, he's put Craig T. Nelson's son in jail, and there's all this backstory about it. And I was like, oh, wait, is this a sequel? Like, are they are they because because they have to like pause and tell us that there's a relationship between these guys. But this movie would totally work if they'd never met each other before. It would work so much better, actually.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I was like, okay, when they introduce this, they're like, okay, he's got history with this character. We know he's already thrown his son in jail. We know all the backstory we need to know right there, but then they spend so long just explaining the backstory like over and over again. We're like, okay, we get it. Like uh one of the notes I wrote was there's not enough action in this Jackson. Like, there's there's so much like dinner scenes and like galas and things. I'm like, fucking fight somebody already.
But I don't understand why they needed that son. Like, we never meet the son. Yeah, we meet Sharon Stone, who's Craig D. Nelson's wife, second wife, and they have to explain that this is his second wife because otherwise wouldn't Carl Weathers know who she is? And it's like we never meet the first wife, but they talk about the first wife. It has nothing to do with the plot. And so, yeah, part of this is just my we meet characters later on, and they reference characters later on. I this is jumping around a little bit, but like there's this whole uh detour where he goes looking for Papa Duck. Do you know who Papa Duck is or what? And this whole other set of characters that tries to kill him for looking for Papa Duck. And they're just like Yeah.
They put it back gets in the way of the movie every chance it can.
Yeah, that's it.
It doesn't need to be a smart plot to for an action movie. It's called Action Jackson for God's sake.
Well, yeah, and so yeah, going back to like he's has this nickname before the movie even starts because of all the stuff that's happened before, but he's been benched for the last two years. And so he's not even action. Like I I never really fully understood why he was called Action Jackson and all that like they they just tried to stuff too much in and couldn't couldn't really cover it all.
Yeah, it was it seemed like he was trying to create a franchise uh movie for himself and tried to give it like some sort of interesting back origin story, but we didn't need it. It's just it's Action Jackson. We know what kind of movie we're gonna go see.
Or this should be the the origin story. Like don't start the franchise in the middle.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. Like they were trying to tell us the origin story in in the middle of this movie instead of just getting to the just just show it, show it. Just get into yeah, show us the action.
Show don't tell. Yeah.
Uh that's kind of uh filmmaking one-on-one, I think.
Yeah. Uh some of my other head scratcher moments. Yeah, so Carl Weathers is trying to investigate what's happening with all these assassinations. Um, and it doesn't seem like there's an official investigation. He's he's just freelancing this. Um, nobody's like, hey, all these union guys are getting killed in these exotic ways. Uh maybe they're related. And it isn't at one point like his boss, um uh what's his name? Duke, uh Bill Duke, uh is playing plays Carl Wether's boss, and uh he's like basically don't look into this, like they're not really like it, like you know, it's that trope where he has to convince people, but it's it's the most obviously related murders that he could have in any city.
Yeah, it's the uh incompetent chain of command trope. Uh but yeah, it's like so obvious that uh Craig D. Nelson is killing these guys off. But uh He's the only one who lives.
Yeah, I I I one of my biggest head scratchers was the scene at the lunch. So it's Craig T. Nelson, Sharon Stone, and then this other union guy. You mean luncheon? Luncheon. Uh no, it's a lunch. What's the difference between a luncheon and a lunch? I feel like a luncheon is like it's an event where somebody's like speaking or something.
Well, I I wrote this down because I thought it was so funny, just as an example of all of the stupid dialogue, but um Action Jackson says, it's too bad you couldn't have found a more suitable luncheon companion. I'm like luncheon is such a funny choice for somebody named Action Jackson.
I forgot that he called it luncheon. Uh yeah, so he shows up at this lunch slash luncheon, shows a photo of his dead friend, um, who was shot in the chest, I believe, but uh ruled a suicide. Um and anyway, uh and shows the photo to Craig T. Nelson and his luncheon companions, and then the the union guy introduces himself and then Action Jackson is just like, oh, and leaves. Like what was he hoping to do at that lunch? Like what what was the purpose of that?
I have no idea. I think it was like to try to muddy um Bellaplane's name in front of the union guy. Craig T. Nelson played. But he did he didn't know the union guelaplane. I I don't know. Like it I want you I want you to explain this to me. I I think maybe he just wants to ruin his reputation in front of anybody he's with. Maybe that was it.
Yeah. Well, he he tries to turn Sharon Stone against him, which seems like the dumbest idea of like, how do we get the villain? Let's go for his wife. Uh and but it it seems like the dumbest thing in real life, but in the movie, she turns on him immediately.
She played like the most oblivious character ever because she immediately like betrays him and goes and talks to action Jackson, and then immediately goes to her husband Delaplane and tells him what she's done. And she was like, I and then like explain yourself, and he gives the um worst explanation ever basically trust me. Like uh that was his his uh how he convinced her. And then she's like, Well, I hope that uh action Jackson will understand when I tell him like she's she's trying to kill herself, I think. Well, it works no survival instincts.
He yeah, he murders her. Which I don't even horrible on his part.
What like why why did he kill her? I don't know. Like, why would you you know that she's gone and talked to the police behind your back. They know she's gone and done that, and then she winds up dead in your bed with a gunshot.
But he somehow successfully is able to frame Jackson. That like I I don't know how it works that way that you can just The rest of the police are terrible.
Like I don't know how they solve any murders in Detroit. Yeah.
Maybe, maybe they didn't. Yeah, Carl Weather's his character, Action Jackson isn't at the house at all. There's no like fingerprints, there's no, but just the husband's able to be like, Yep, one of your own, one of your cops, just murdered my wife. And they're like, Okay, APD, we'll find him. And like, no, no investigation. Uh Craig D. Nelson kills her and his henchmen come in, and they're just like so matter-of-fact, like, like how how villainous do you need to be for your bodyguards just not flinch when they see your dead wife on the bed?
Everyone, everyone was so casual. Like, I don't think anybody's heart rate rose above 70 in the whole scene. Yeah. Why was Delaplane's house so foggy inside?
I don't know. I haven't been to Detroit in a while. I don't know what the weather patterns are like.
It was like every room had a fog machine going in it. Like this is the inside of his house, right?
Yeah, they kind of tried to make most of the movie seem like a film noir type. It was like film noir mixed with 80s action. Could have worked.
Yeah. There's so much to talk about in this movie. Uh can we talk about vanity? Yeah. I was gonna say we should probably talk about her.
Uh we've got yet another um nightclub singer as a major character in uh in a bad 80s movie.
Yeah.
What do you think about her?
I was not a fan of the character or the performance, really. Same. Uh the the music was not good. Like the her songs that they made us sit and listen to the whole song a couple times. Yeah. It was not a good. I mean, I don't want to besmirch anyone's uh career or anything, but I just was not a fan of the singing. And then the character, I could not understand. Like horrible things happen to her. Her entire house blows up, like she barely escapes. She loses everything. And then, like, literally ten ten seconds later, she's like giggling and flirty, and it's like it's like she has no awareness of what the plot is.
She's all over Action Jackson. Uh she is on drugs at that point, but that's true. By the way, can we talk about that that scene where her house blows up? They walk into her house and she's the phone starts ringing, and Action Jackson is immediately like, who's calling you? Who calls you at this time of like he's so suspicious of the phone ringing? And did the phone trigger a bomb? Is that what we're led to believe? Why how would you know that?
He didn't want her to turn any lights on because he it's like he knew the house was rigged with a bomb sometime.
Yeah. I mean, it was stuff like that that I was like, wait, what did I miss?
Like uh Yeah, this guy's Sherlock Holmes. How did he know?
What is happening? But yeah, her her dialogue is terrible. Her her uh character, you're right, doesn't make any sense. She's just there to essentially be horny for action Jackson and also damsel in distress. And that's it, I guess. Yep. Um, she says things like, Man, you must be a priest or something, like when he doesn't reciprocate her advances. Um but I do he takes her to a hotel after her house blows up and they don't they don't spend the night together. But uh he's taking a shower and he comes out of the shower, no shirt, just all wet, and then has jeans on. I was like, did he take a shower with his jeans on? Yeah. Uh I mean he he looked fit, but uh it's like what is what is happening? What is your routine here?
I don't know. I liked uh when she sang the first uh like nightclub song for Craig T. Nelson. Yeah. And she like was just singing it for him. She focused in on him, was you know really sultry and everything. And then at the end of the song, she said, I expected a standing ovation. And he said, You're getting one.
Uh yeah, that was funny.
Yeah.
Yeah, the movie kind of goes off the rails a little bit, I think, during that whole part where he's with vanity and the papa dock thing that I mentioned earlier, which I don't understand at all. Uh and then they go see a barber that gives them all. I'm like, why does this barber have all this information?
I don't know. She was great though. D. Yeah. Did you notice that she said D, oh, like all D words? No. Her name was D, but she said, like, there's D Brie in the Detroit River. And like she used like alliterations with D a lot of times.
Oh, that's an awesome choice. I wish I would have noticed that.
And she's smoking a cigar while she's cutting hair. She was an awesome character. I also loved the uh I like the whole side point with Papa Doc was completely a waste of time, but it introduced uh Kid Sable. Do you remember that character that like ran the the hotel he was staying at?
Yeah, the hotel guy. Yeah, yeah, he was funny.
Yeah. He said yabby dabby do because he was watching watching the Flintstones.
Yeah, I loved uh when the cops were trying to find Action Jackson and they go to the hotel and he's uh he's just like making fun of them as they're running to and from the hotel. He's like, I can I can re recommend a good bathhouse if you like. Do you want a double bed?
Yeah, he was great. I liked him.
Around that time, those cops try to commandeer this like Volkswagen Beetle, and then they're like, We're cops. We're commandeering. Yeah. And the driver's like, fuck you are. She drives off.
Yeah, I remember that because I I I thought it was so funny. And she was also like laughing as she said it. She was like, You are not taking this car.
Yeah.
That was a good one.
Um, we s skipped over probably my favorite scene that I wrote in all caps, worst car chase scene ever. Uh, this was I don't even really remember the the context doesn't matter. But uh he starts there's an assassin uh in a cab um that I think tries to kill Sharon Stone or him. I don't know. Doesn't matter. Both. Uh he starts chasing after the cab on foot, and I like how he was able to keep up with him for so long.
Yeah.
And then Carl Weather's 30 foot vertical twice. Yeah. Just straight up into the air to jump onto this cab. Uh, and he lands on the cab and he's like, now I got you. Like, what do you got? You're hanging onto the roof of a cab. What's gonna happen here?
Speeds down the road. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh they somehow figured out how to have so many explosions. I I I laughed out loud when I saw the truck full of like um, what are they like gas containers or whatever? The yeah, I don't know what you call them. Because like as soon as you saw that, as as soon as I saw that, I was like, yeah, this is gonna be an explosion.
Yep.
Um and it was just like several minutes of just the worst like and best uh car chase like scenes. Um somehow he manages to uh I don't even know how he does this, but like gets like gets to get the car flipping up into the air and exploding. Uh the bad guy escapes, but it was like, yeah, Action Jackson just took down this car um with his bare hands.
Yeah, he the car launched like 50 feet in in the air after Action Jackson did a standing, like forward somersault over the car as it tried to run him down.
Yeah, he was standing in the middle of the road. Come at come at me. I forget exactly what he said.
Yeah. By me like a man. And then he Yeah. He jumped like ten feet in the air.
Oh, at least.
At least, yeah.
Yeah.
It was like it was like cartoon physics.
Should we should we skip ahead to like the end or the t they're kind of like two end scenes that I want to talk about? One is one is we yet again have a a uh scene in a like is it a dock or a mine or like some sort of industrial site um where it's a labyrinth thing where vanity tells this another union guy. I don't really understand his he's gonna become the head of the union. Anyway, uh this guy's like goes up the set of stairs and to she's like, oh, what's his name is up there? Craig D. Nelson's character. I forget his name.
Delaplane.
Delaplane. Delaplane's up there, and he's just like, okay. And he's like sweating like a hawk just walking up one flight of stairs, which I thought was funny. And then Action Jackson is like at one rung above and like comes down on a chain. I'm like, what is that for?
Yeah, that was insane.
Yeah. What what human does that? That's just like, I'm gonna meet this guy, so I'm just gonna like they clearly were like, I want this shot. So I know for an entrance, you know.
Like, they clearly just thought that would look really cool.
This will be good in the trailer.
It makes no practical sense. Um it was very Terminator-ish, though.
Yeah.
It felt like the Terminator.
But it but it wasn't like slow like that.
It was more it didn't look as good.
Yeah. Uh they capture him, they chain him up, and again we have a shirtless scene.
I love that they took his shirt off. He had his shirt on when he was captured, and they took it off and greased him up.
Yeah, he was really greasy. Uh but it was just like several minutes like, why does he have his shirt off? And then they explained it. It's because they have this other black guy that's they're gonna have wear his shirt and kill somebody so they can friend. I'm like, okay, I get the whole like all black guys look alike, but this guy looks nothing like him. And also, it's not like the public, like the cops are like, oh yeah, it was Action Jackson. Because I remember he wore a red polo that day.
Yeah.
And that's how I'll like just go get another red polo if that's like it's not like his signature look anyway. But it was just like they added all this plot just so they could have the scene with his shirt off.
Like, I know they ex over-explain every detail when it's completely unnecessary. Have it be blown off of his body. We'll believe it. It's it's strange accent and nonsensical.
Yeah.
You don't need to explain it any other way. It it's it we get we it makes sense why his shirt comes off.
Yeah, and then this is a scene where I that I referenced earlier where Delaplane does all the exposition and stuff and like tells his plan that still doesn't make any sense. And then literally, Action Jackson yells, What do you want from me, Duplane? And I'm like, he just told you.
Yeah. He just explained the plot again.
He just told you what he's gonna do. And he's gonna kill you. I you know, the there's nothing you can do right now.
Yeah, what do you think he wants?
Yeah. Um, of course he escapes, so many explosions, people on fire. I'm like, yeah, this is just they just reverse engineered, like, okay, how many explosions could we have here? And let's try to wrap some plot around it. Um but somehow this scene gets topped by the end-to-end scene where Action Jackson actually gets his man. Uh my first note was where did he get fitted tuxes for himself and all his friends? The hotel guy, the the petty thief guy, and like all in like just a couple hours.
Yeah, on a policeman's salary. I mean and it's like Andrew said about Caratop. It's not the money that's keeping it away. Yeah, it's it's the logistics of it, not the uh Yeah, it's the logistics.
Like it doesn't even matter if it's free. Like, you know, and it's not like I again I didn't want them to be. Yeah. I d yeah, I don't want some plot point of them introducing us to a tuxedo shop guy that he knows or whatever. It's just like the the logistics of like he's he's been captured and like blows up all these people escape and he's like, I gotta go get Del Plane. Like at some point he's gotta be like, All right, let me round up all these guys. Let's let's figure out where are we gonna do this. Oh, he's having a party.
Okay, let's go and discuss like you're the reason that they over-explain every plot point because you're like, where'd you get the tuxedo? And next time Carl Weather's just gonna be like, All right, we gotta introduce a Taylor character.
Yeah. No, no, I I'm actually saying the opposite, like they they tried to make it to like they he should have just run with his, you know, same like jeans shirt off and just like bust into the party and went and got the guy. Like they they add this elaborate setup that makes no sense in the context of that story.
Or just break into like the locker room area of the hotel that has all these uh uniforms on uh on a rack or something.
Yeah, yeah. Like pretend to be the catering staff or something. Yeah. Like why? Anyway.
Uh I think that other movies have solved the problems that this movie couldn't figure out with plot.
Yeah, but it's also this whole elaborate plot from the villain, too, where he's gonna have this party and assassinates and blame it on this random cop that he has history with. Yeah. Uh oh, so but um uh then it anyway, we don't have to go like shot by shot in that, but it just like crescendos when Action Jackson jumps into the prototype car or whatever and starts driving it through the house up the stairs.
Yeah. Well, the the fact that he's a uh auto magnate had to factor in somehow to the final set piece.
Uh Kelly happened to walk in right as he's driving the car through the house, and she was just like, You're watching a bad movie, aren't you? Well, yeah, no shit.
How can you tell?
Some guy just jumped into a car and it's driving up the stairs through bad guys.
Yeah. My notes for this movie are almost all quotes and tropes.
Yeah. What what are your your favorite quotes? Um, I'm putting that word favorite in your mouth. Maybe it's not your favorite quotes.
Uh Raymond Foss, who was the uh the Auto Workers Alliance uh president that Delaplane was meeting with with uh said that something uh was gonna happen faster than shit through Secretariat, which I liked. Um Action Jackson was talking about uh Delaplane's wife and how he needed to like use her to turn against him. Yeah. And he was he was talking to uh just the creepiest coroner in the world. Uh yeah. I hate I hated this character, but he said, I know a beautiful woman, but I gotta get her away from her husband. And the coroner said, Story of my life, and then winked at him. Uh the luncheon companion cracked me up. Uh another one was uh Craig T. Nelson was sorry about his wife, and he said, Has Madam arrived yet? And just hearing uh coach say madam was too funny. Uh the creepy coroner, uh when he was uh after Sharon Stone died, he was there working the case, and he said, Women this beautiful beautiful don't come around that often. I always gotta see them like this. Just just he's so creepy. She's a dead woman, and you're like, man, she's hot.
Uh which uh yeah, I don't know any coroners, but I'd have to imagine that never happened. Like you never I mean, yeah, you have to be I would hope that never. All right, that's that's taking us away off change. It all right.
Uh there was also these henchmen that he ran into when he was coming after Papa Doc. Uh I don't know if you remember them. They had Papa Doc's nuts in a jar.
Oh, I remember them because it made no sense. I didn't I had no idea who those people were.
And the dialogue was insane. Uh they had captured uh Carl Weathers and one of the one of the henchmen said Papa Doc was a very valuable source of information to us, man. A regular library of Congress. Unfortunately, like so many libraries, his books were open to the public.
I jotted that down.
Like, what does that mean? And then another one said, You're a big John, aren't you? You think I'm geeche or something, don't you? Don't bog bogart me, Lightfoot. There ain't nothing we like better than to take a Tom Slick like you and have a little blanket party. What the fuck is this dialogue? Slang from the 1980s. I guess. Uh Sydney, when she was on drugs, said, I feel like my teeth are hollow, my gums are dry rubber, and somebody's trying to start a bonfire in the back of my bloody head. I'm like, this is a heroin addict talking.
Yeah. Uh by the way, her needle was that she was using. That was huge. Yeah. Is that normal?
I don't think so. That was like a comic book needle.
Yeah, that was like 1940s, like uh insane asylum needle.
Um, I also thought Action Jackson had one of the worst action movie one-liners uh of all time. Yeah he uh he gets a guy and he says chill out and then he blasts him with a flamethrower. I'm like, what? Do you know what this stunt is? Yeah. Uh there was also this uh super rich woman at the party Delaplane was throwing at the end, and she was so mad and she came and she said, I'm scandalized. There was no one at the door to park our car.
And then he was like, Go check on it, like towards his henchmen, like like he knew like that was a sign that something was wrong.
Yeah. There was also this Mr. Ed or uh Ed character. I don't know if he was Mr. Ed, but he was this huge henchman. Uh, and he said, I'm Mr. Ed, and then he jumped, jumped from like the ceiling, fell like 10 feet and landed on his feet.
Yeah.
It was a such a strange looking stunt.
He was uh Vanity's bodyguard. Yeah. From earlier. Yeah. Uh you skipped over two of my favorites, favorite lines. One was from when Action Jackson and Delaplane first met, and he's talking about his son being in prison. And he says they're talking about his yeah, the son being in jail, and he says, All it takes is a new opening uh about like making new friends or something in prison. Uh and then a little innuendo or something for uh and then at the end, uh yeah, Acton Jackson kills the the bad guy, and Van D's talks about going cold turkey, how she's gonna quit drugs, and uh she says, You can have me on Thanksgiving. How about that? Yeah. And he says, Can I have you any sooner?
Yeah. The dialogue in this was so bad. So cheesy. Yeah. I thought that the uh the police captain or whatever in this movie was gonna be the he was kind of the stereotypical angry, shouty captain. Yeah. But he did not give a shit about what uh Action Jackson did at all. Like Action Jackson caused so much damage and destruction in this movie, and he never gave a shit. He was just like, okay.
Well, uh yeah, he his character kind of disappeared after the first like third of the movie. Like once Action Jackson it was that inexplicable shift of now all the cops were looking for Action Jackson because they thought he had uh killed Sharon Stone's character. And then I I don't even really remember seeing Bill Duke, uh his boss, until like the final scene when he like finally gets the bad guy. Uh Bill Duke, by the way, was in Predator and Commando and a bunch of stuff.
But he was in a lot of these around that time.
Uh but this was like the last movie. It was also like one of those things like, okay, everybody suspects that he's a murderer, and whatever he does at this party, like how does that help his case? Like, how does that clear his name?
He kills more people. Yeah.
It makes it seem worse that he's returning to the scene of the crime, killing the husband, and all sorts like uh like at one point the cops, like one of the his cop nemesis guys catches him at the party, and and he's like, You gonna turn me in? And he says, Any reason why I shouldn't? And like I don't understand what the answer was. It was like he like looked at him and like kind of, you know, uh, there's chaos around, and he's like, All right, I'll let you go. Like, yeah, no, you didn't explain how you didn't do all the things that he thought you did, and you just killed somebody, and like now it's like, oh, it's all right, you've cleared your name.
A lot of these uh movies do that where it's just very conveniently wrapped up because the hero killed the bad guy. Right. It's like, well, you've still got a lot of um there's gonna be a lot of follow-up to this that doesn't necessarily clear your name.
Prosecutors don't just drop the charges as soon as soon as uh you kill somebody else.
Yeah. I I wish I knew where Craig T. Nelson mustered the confidence to choose to fist fight Carl Weathers at the end of the movie.
Yeah.
And he had him dead to rights.
I was gonna say, uh, you asked about Craig T. Nelson earlier, and I forgot about this, but they really tried to make him into like a martial arts master in this movie. There's this whole scene where he's fighting. I I couldn't tell if that was supposed to be his instructor or just somebody he was sparring with, but he gets super violent with this guy.
I know.
And uh they both that scene and the end scene with Carl Weathers, uh yeah, there's a lot of like hand-to-hand combat, but it's cut in a way that is clear that Craig D. Nelson isn't doing it at all.
It's cut in a way that um uh uh Steven Sagal would cut it.
Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, it's not it's not believable. You're right. It does take some confidence too to be like, all right, yep, I can take this. I got him. Uh I have one big thing. I've never uh never say never, I guess, but I don't remember ever seeing in a movie a man being thrown through a window and then that man going through another window across the street. I was like, that's crazy. Uh I know.
Yeah. It was an incredible stunt, and I it looked like it hurt. Yeah. The only thing that I can think of that's similar is I think in one of the Bourne movies, there was a stunt where he jumped from one building to another and the cameraman did the same, like it followed him. Yeah. But that was what it reminded me of. But I don't know that I've seen an older movie than this where they did that stunt.
Yeah. I thought that was pretty cool and and crazy.
Yeah, but then it was followed up by the stupidest stunt where Carl T. Weathers uh Carl T. Weathers. Uh Carl Wezdle. I don't know.
Carl Terminator Weathers.
Where Carl Weathers and uh Vanity jump and they break their fall by landing on their convertible in the park. Like 30 feet. I know that would kill you. Yeah. Yeah. Uh there was a man who touched an an electrical panel and instantly burst into flames and got electrocuted at the same time. He didn't like break the electrical panel, he just fell into the front of it and that killed him.
Yeah. Are those that dangerous? Um yeah, how does electricity work? He also killed the assassin guy that was trying to impersonate him with the Christmas lights. The that guy got an electric and he like all he did was just like break some Christmas lights on him, and the guy just like got electrocuted.
I know. I didn't understand either of those deaths. Very convenient.
Yeah. What's your final verdict of this movie?
On my scale.
Yeah, with your scale or I don't know. What'd you think about it?
I liked it okay. Uh it was it was good for a laugh every once in a while. Uh the plot was nonsensical. Um But yeah, it it needed more action to me. Uh lots of lots of movie tropes, a few good stunts. I think Carl Weathers is fine. He he uh he was okay in this, but yeah, I think he's pretty good.
I I think he could have with a better better vehicle could have pulled it off. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I this was tough for me to rate because uh we were talking earlier and I feel like it's it's not a good movie. About a third of it is just a bad movie, about a third of it is kind of boring and meandering, but then another third is like so bad it's good. And so yeah, there are parts of this that I enjoyed that were kind of fun. I'm just like yeah, this is yeah, this is terrible, but it just like went into the absurd. Um maybe if like maybe I'd watch like a 45 minute edit of this movie. Like since the plot doesn't make any sense anyway, it's just like just cut that stuff out.
Yeah, I I'm kind of disappointed because I feel like Action Jackson is a great name for a for a character, and if this had been a franchise, it could have worked. But um yeah, parts of it did veer into so bad it's good, but not enough parts. Like Amanda, I watched it with Amanda and she said it like it it could have been better if it didn't take itself so seriously. Uh which like it it did, like it had all of the silly tropes that could have still worked, but uh it just didn't didn't laugh at itself enough to be enjoyable, really. Yeah for me.
What's your I'll pick?
Uh kind of convoluted. Uh Action Jackson released the same weekend as two other Black Led films. Did you know this? No. Uh there was a spiky movie called School Days that released the same weekend.
Uh-huh. And then I think I did did see something about this because it uh Carl Weathers wanted it to be rescheduled.
Yeah, yeah. Uh and then the other movie was uh Shoot to Kill starring Sidney Poitiers. Uh-huh. Uh Sidney Poitiers directed a movie with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, starring Craig T. Nelson called Stir Crazy. Alright. I could have just gone the Craig T. Nelson route, but I guess so. Uh yeah. Uh it's hilarious. It's a great movie. Uh they get framed for uh a crime they didn't commit and they have to go on the run to prove their innocence, and it's it's a comedy of errors, and it's hilarious.
Have you was this an alt pick for you before?
It might have been.
I feel like we've talked about this recently.
Recently, I don't know.
I don't think I've seen Stir Crazy.
Oh, really? I love it. It has one of my favorite prison scenes of all time. Better than dirty work. Yes. I love Norm, but this is Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor at their peak.
Yeah, I feel like we have talked about this. Uh yeah, I need to see it.
It's a good one.
Cool.
Uh what'd you pick?
I really struggled with the alt pick, so I just picked Predator. I'm gonna cheat. Cause it was like there were like six people in this that were in Predator. It was it was like they were just sitting around the craft services table and like, like, hey, you should be in this too.
Like, I'll I'll just I like we don't actually have a role for you, but you can just be there for five minutes and just we'll just make some shit up and we'll fight, and then that'll be uh uh this is kind of uh getting ahead of ourselves, but our movie for next week, I feel like I had a similar uh thing with it and diehard. And I was like, these henchmen are the same henchmen from diehard, and then I went and looked at it, and it's like no actors that appeared in this movie appeared in diehard. I'm like, oh fuck. Do all hench do all henchmen look the same to me?
They all look alike to you.
Yeah.
Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know. It's I feel like it's it's way too popular to be a legit alt pit, but I couldn't think of anything else.
Yeah, I'll allow it.
All right. Thanks. Well, I think that's all we've got for Action Jackson. Uh thanks for listening. If you have any thoughts or questions, hit us up at the worst movie podcast at gmail.com. I'm Ade.
I'm Aaron. Thanks for listening to the Worst Movie Podcast.