Director: John Stewart
Cast: Gregory Scott Cummins, William Hubbard Knight, Barri Murphy, William Smith

Every so often, I like to sit back and think about my many experiences at my alma mater - when I am in a masochistic frame of mind. As you probably guessed by that statement, I thought my various struggles and challenges at university in order to get my degree were a big pain in you know where. Not only were classes difficult, they were a big distraction from my one big love in life - movies. Still, I have to admit that along the way, I picked up some interesting things in my classes that I was able to use in my ponderings of my biggest hobby. For example, take the time that I took an introduction to philosophy class. You might think that the ramblings-on of long-dead philosophers from Greece might not have anything useful towards the modern invention of motion pictures, but you would be wrong. I seem to recall what one Greek philosopher named Aristotle said about acting in his word Poetics. According to him regarding the concept for mimesis, he claimed that actors through their act of imitation could evoke emotions and convey universal truths, and I think he was on to something there. But the Greek philosopher that I really want to talk about is Plato. He also spoke about acting, but what he had to say about it was really interesting. In his work The Republic, he claimed that actors on whatever stage should actually have real-life experience regarding the specific characters they are playing - in other words, an actor who would be playing a farmer should have some real-life farming experience, an actor playing a gambler should have a lot of real-life gambling experience, and so on. Plato claimed that this is the way it should be with actors so that the actors can ensure authenticity and moral integrity.

What did I think of this opinion at the time? Well, pretty much the same as how I feel about it several decades later. On one hand, an actor who has personal experience in the skills of his character can indeed often give his character a believable aurora, and would probably please those in the audience who have practiced these same skills in their careers. On the other hand, the idea of, say, taking your typical real-life farmer and suddenly thrusting him on the stage with the expectation that he'll be able to "act" like a farmer character would in most instances be an instant failure. To sell a character needs a lot more skill than just knowing what skills the character has. Just look at Hollywood figures like Chuck Norris and Lorenzo Lamas - sure, they know how to fight well in front of a camera, but when it comes to things like enunciating dialogue and showing convincing emotions, they are absolutely hopeless. With my saying that about actors, it doesn't take much more pondering to realize that the same could be said about other roles in a motion picture. Take the case of Hollywood legend Hal Needham (Death Car On The Freeway). Needham was a stuntman for many years in Hollywood movies and television shows before deciding he'd like to try his hand at directing action movies. At first this was hugely successful - his first time directing a movie, the Burt Reynolds vehicle Smokey And The Bandit, was a huge box office hit, and in the next years following he racked up some other movies that were also box office hits. However, with each subsequent movie, it started to become clear that Needham's style was generally goofball and unsubtle, which didn't exactly make him first choice for more prestigious action movies. Indeed, within a few years the public had enough of his style, with the one-two punch of the bombs Megaforce and Stroker Ace killing any remaining momentum and pushing him into smaller stuff for the rest of his directing career.

On the other hand, there is the case of B movie studio PM Entertainment, the makers of some fantastic action movies such as The Sweeper, Last Man Standing, Recoil, and The Silencers. Although most of their best movies were officially directed by the studios' founders Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin, I've uncovered evidence over the years that strongly suggests that when it came to the action portions of their movies, what they would do is hand over the planning, staging, and directing of the action to the stunt teams. I can believe it; I'm sure after so many years of working with executing stunts, the various stuntmen on PM Entertainment movies would not only have come up with great concepts for action sequences they'd like to display in front of a camera, but how to execute it in the most spectacular way possible. Since PM Entertainment movies worked so well with this method, you might understand why when I came across Action U.S.A., I was pretty eager to watch it. Actually, it wasn't a PM Entertainment production, but it was a production of stuntmen, namely legendary Hollywood stuntman John Stewart (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) and his stuntmen buddies. As I often like to say... how on earth could I resist? Before getting into the stunt work and other aspects of the movie, the plot: Carmen (Barri Murphy, Armed For Action) is a young woman who is deeply in love with her boyfriend Billy Ray (Rod Shaft). However, Carmen doesn't know that Billy Ray has possibly been up to no good - gangster kingpin Frankie Navarro (Cameron Mitchell, Monkey On My Back) believes that Billy Ray stole some diamonds from him, and sends a hit team to kill Billy Ray and retrieve the diamonds. While the hit team does kill B.R., Carmen manages to escape from the hitmen, and eventually gets into the custody of FBI agents McKinnon (William Hubbard Knight) and Osborne (Gregory Scot Cummins, Stone Cold), who pledge to protect her and to stop Navarro. But both agents don't know that one of the other FBI agents on the case, Conover (William Smith, Seven), is secretly working for Navarro, and eventually Navarro hires the ultimate hitman, a man named Drago (Ross Hagen, The Devil's 8) to knock off Carmen and get the diamonds back. It's unclear who will prevail, but one thing's for sure... there'll be a lot of action first in the U.S.A.!

With my revelation that the action movie Action U.S.A. was made by stuntmen, I am pretty sure you're most curious about if the action not only comes in spades, but is well staged and executed. But before I do that, I just want to comment on other aspects of John Stewart's direction. Some of the sound mixing is awkward, leaving some audio too soft or too loud, and some dialogue is very obviously looped. Plus, some of the music in a few action sequences don't fit with the mayhem being displayed. However, Stewart does make sure the movie looks generally pretty good; while there are a few shabby examples of production values here and there (such as a supposed motel room interior) that show the movie had a low budget, otherwise the movie is well dressed and in fact has some excellent photography that really shines if you get to see this movie in HD as I did. Also, to Stewart's credit, he almost always keeps the movie moving at a very brisk pace so that viewers will ponder little or not at all with a number of idiocies with the script (more on those moments shortly). And as for the movie's top telling point - action - hoo boy, does Stewart deliver the goods. Every kind of action you can think of is displayed in some form in this movie: high falls, car chases, vehicles leaping off the ground and flying through the air, shoot-outs, fist fights, explosions, it's here! There's not just a variety of action in Action U.S.A., it's usually staged in the best way possible. When two people are struggling over a gun, they do it on the top of a car speeding quickly down a highway. When someone falls from a high building, they land on a car. When people catch on fire (three times!), they scream while firing guns or falling from high above. I don't want to spoil all the action delights in this movie, but I do want to assure you that if you want good old American action, you'll get plenty of it in Action U.S.A.

The ample and professionally-staged action in Action U.S.A. will be enough for many viewers, I know that for sure. But personally, I wanted more than just that. Don't get me wrong, I can recommend the movie just for the action alone, but after watching so many action movies in my life, I want something else high quality between bouts of violence. I certainly did not get that from the script. To its credit, the movie starts off well, in its first few minutes setting and explaining the situation before cranking out the action. However, it doesn't take long at all for the movie to start displaying some very unbelievable plot turns and character actions. For example, there are several times in the movie where the protagonists and antagonists coincidentally bump into each other, because it seems there's no way to keep up a natural and believable pursuit or discovery. There are also moments such as a penultimate confrontation on top of a building suddenly cuts to the protagonists on the ground safe and sound - how did they get down without confronting again the villainous Drago, who was still in the building? There are other various stupidities throughout, some including that the heroic FBI agents apparently take orders from a municipal sheriff, Carmen for no apparent reason waiting a few hours before asking her FBI handlers what they want from her, Navarro's dumb thugs keeping using one particular stolen car for their pursuit despite it being a Mercedes and would be on the top of the police's stolen car list, the dumb thugs deciding to get information out of Carmen's boyfriend by dangling him from a helicopter right over a busy downtown area, the FBI not assigning more agents on the case when it's a case involving a big time mobster, why the FBI guys just don't take Carmen in to local law enforcement for protection until backup support from the FBI can come in, and on and on and on... and before I go on, I will add an extra and necessary "and on".

Obviously, the story for Action U.S.A. will never win any awards for realism. Yes, I do realize we action fans can suspend some belief with an action movie, but the implausibility found in this movie is quite excessive. Another problem I had with the script is that despite director Stewart's frequent gusto, he can't quite hide that the last two-thirds of the movie has the story slow down to a near standstill. There's still some spectacular action that comes up, so that sugarcoats things a little. Plus, the cast generally does add some spark to things at even the slower moments. I'm not saying all of the cast is great or is used to their full potential. William Smith only has three scenes in the entire movie, two of them running less than a minute each. Cameron Mitchell only has three scenes too, which not only are totally gratuitous and were obviously shot over just one day of production, they don't allow him to show what the fate of his character is at the end of the movie. The movie is a showcase instead for its no-name cast. Their performances do lack some polish at times, with heroine actress Barri Murphy and William Hubbard Knight as one of the FBI agents often sounding like they are speaking their lines as if doing a cold reading from the script for the first time. Still, Murphy does get naked a few times, and doesn't wear a bra even when wearing clothing. Knight does seem comfortable on the screen despite not always being enthusiastic enough, and does occasionally generate a little chemistry with his onscreen partner played by Gregory Scott Cummins. You do end up liking him, as well as his co-stars; even the various antagonists are fun to watch, since like the protagonists you can sense they were very enthusiastic about being in Action U.S.A. even if their performances are not always the best they could accomplish. At times this movie is like a glorified home movie, but one done with so much passion and energy in front of and behind the camera that you can look past any major flaws and watch the entire thing with a guity pleasure smile on your face.

(Posted September 30, 2024)