Detroit Police Department Detective Sergeant Jericho "Action" Jackson uncovers a string of murdered trade-union members connected to businessman Peter Anthony Dellaplane's company. Jackson discovers Dellaplane is secretly maneuvering to gain political power and choose the next president of the United States. Dellaplane kills his wife Patrice and frames Jackson for the murder. Jackson joins forces with Dellaplane's mistress, Sydney Ash, a local lounge singer whom Dellaplane has turned into a heroinaddict, and sets out to clear his name and take Dellaplane down.
A creation that came about when I was doing Predator and talking to Joel Silver, who loved blaxploitation movies. Joel said, "Well, you know, why don't you put something together?" So during that time of shooting [Predator] down in Puerto Vallarta, I created this 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. We got it made.[2]
Robert Reneau was hired to write the screenplay and submitted his original draft one month and a half later. It is his first produced script, although he had briefly worked on additional scenes for Lethal Weapon.[3] In addition to Weathers and Silver, supporting actors Bill Duke and Sonny Landham also returned from Predator, as did stunt coordinator Craig R. Baxley, who made his directorial debut with Action Jackson.[4][5]Sharon Stone had already been featured in several films, but was not yet an established star and had to audition alongside many other candidates.[6] Filming began on May 4, 1987,[4][5] which Weathers estimated to have been 11 months after his initial conversation with Silver.[7] Neither Weathers nor the production wanted the story to be set in Los Angeles, but the majority was shot there for financial reasons, and most of the Detroit footage was captured by the second unit.[8]Paula Abdul was the music choreographer.[9]
A total of slightly more than 18 months spanned from pitch to release, a quick schedule for an action film.[7] The budget was estimated at around $8 million.[8] It is the first feature produced and released by the embattled Lorimar following a regime change including the arrival of industry veteran Bernie Brillstein as president.[10]:5 (Part IV)
Pre-release
Action Jackson's U.S. opening was scheduled on President's Day weekend in 1988, concurrently with two other black-led films, the action-oriented Shoot to Kill and Spike Lee's School Daze.[11] The latter nearly had its limited release pushed back by Columbia to avoid perceived competition from Weathers for the attention of the African-American public, although Lee scoffed at the notion that the black audience had such uniform tastes, and won.[12]
Home releases
The film's U.S. home video debut was on July 13, 1988.[5] Priced for rental, 200,000 copies were sold around launch in the domestic market.[13] It is the 47th most popular video of 1988 on Billboard's yearly rental chart.[14]
The rights to broadcast television premiere were bought by Chicago-based superstationWGN rather than by one of the main networks.[15]
The musical score was composed by Herbie Hancock and Michael Kamen. The Action Jackson original soundtrack album features a theme composed by Hancock, and songs by various artists including Sister Sledge, The Pointer Sisters and co-star Vanity who is featured three times.[16] Weathers and Vanity are in the promotional video for the Pointer Sisters single "He Turned Me Out".[17]
Reception
Box office
The film grossed $4.7 million in its opening weekend, finishing in third place behind Good Morning Vietnam and Shoot to Kill.[18] It marked the first time Lorimar had cracked the weekly box office top 10 in the U.S.[10]:1, 4 (Part IV) The picture went on to gross $20.3 million in domestic theaters.[19] The Los Angeles Times called it a "reasonable" performance for the studio, which did not have a track record of theatrical success, deriving most of its revenue from TV series.[10]:5 (Part IV)
Critical
Action Jackson had a largely negative critical reception. It has a score of 19% on Rotten Tomatoes from 16 reviews.[20] On Metacritic it has a weighted average score of 36 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[21]
Walter Goodman of the New York Times was largely indifferent to the film, mentioning that Jackson's vaunted Harvard degree did not prevent the dialogue from sounding like "junior high school locker room" talk, and that "[l]ike lots of kindred movies, Action Jackson [...] is about shattered glass and fiery explosions. There may be a few more car bodies sent to the junk heap than usual, but, then, this is Detroit."[22]Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one star out of a possible four and wrote: "some of the parts are good, but none of them fit and a lot of them stink". Ebert described Weathers as a good actor in supporting roles, but also believed he "doesn't have the necessary charisma" to be a leading man and was often out-shined by co-stars in Action Jackson. Ebert praised Vanity's performance as "the movie’s one redeeming merit".[23] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times acknowledged the film's commercial potential but lambasted its "almost pornographic fascination with guns and weaponry" and summed it up as "[b]ad in that dispiritingly well-mounted, press-all-the-buttons way that occasionally pulls in big audiences."[24]
Among more positive opinions, Eleanor Ringel of Cox News Services called the film a "minor-league action movie" but praised the level of care that went into it, embodied by the casting of distinguished actor Craig T. Nelson as the main antagonist. She said, "Weathers has weathered into a decidedly more palatable action hero than his former co-star Sly Stallone."[25] Buzz McClain of The Buffalo News conceded that the film "follow[ed] the familiar formula" of contemporary action films, but found that Craig Baxley "handle[d] Jackson's action with panache" and Weathers offered an "affable presence".[26] The United Press International agency deemed that Action Jackson was "a brisk action film that's sure to spark a sequel" and that "Weathers comes off well."[27]
Legacy
Weathers said he hoped the film would become a franchise "but Lorimar sold the lot to Sony and sold the library to Warner Bros., and that was that. It never resurfaced again, unfortunately."[2] The unrelated 1990 film Dangerous Passion, also starring Weathers, was released in Germany as Action Jackson 2.[28]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
