Plot: An American’s (Carl Weathers) search for his sister leads to foul play and a brothel on the coast of Australia.
After the sad passing of Carl Weathers a few days ago, I’ve been wanting to revisit one of his underappreciated action gems – Hurricane Smith. Many refer to it as Action Jackson 2, but I think it stands on its own two feet as a hugely entertaining actioner with Weathers at his charismatic best.
Filmed in Australia Weathers plays Billy “Hurricane” Smith who heads down under to search for his sister who has disappeared without a trace.
When he gets there, Billy starts asking questions about his sister’s whereabouts and manages to piss off local scumbag Charlie (played by a demonic Jürgen Prochnow). I cannot stress enough what a nasty piece of work Charlie is here, and he is one of the most hateful villains I’ve seen for some time. He isn’t even given an ounce of humanity but he’s just a misogynistic, murdering bastard.
We find out that Australians tend not to like Americans referring to them as “Septics” as in septic tank which is rhyming slang for yank.
Along the way Billy meets Julia (Cassandra Delaney) who is a hooker working for Charlie and when Billy starts sniffing around Charlie goes berserk thinking she is betraying him.
There are a couple of nods to Rocky with the hotel Billy is staying at called the Apollo and whenever Shanks (David Argue) comes to his door he says it’s Sylvester Stallone.
There is an overly long and awkward love scene which will likely have most looking through their phones, but the music alone will make you smile perhaps unintentionally.
There isn’t too much action for the first half hour but it’s setting up the story and characters; the fact that Hurricane Smith runs at just under 85 minutes is a massive point in its favour meaning it is never less than entertaining.
I feel like it’s a little more serious and lacking the same budget as Action Jackson, so it doesn’t have the same kind of set-pieces or memorable dialogue, but I doubt anyone could be disappointed with the final 25 minutes which involves an awesome speedboat chase, shoot-out at the villain’s compound and a truly epic bad guy death too. We also get a few fights throughout making it an easy watch.
Brian May (Not of Queen) provides the music score and it’s filled with slinky saxophones very much a product of the time, but I still love every minute of it. Isn’t it funny how we never hear saxophones anymore?
Overall, Hurricane Smith may not have the budget of Action Jackson, but Carl Weathers once again proved he had the chops to be a charismatic leading man and he looked the part in the action scenes too. I have to give a tip of my hat to Jürgen Prochnow as well for playing such a despicable villain and the final 25 minutes is when the action really heats up making this a fun and relatively short actioner. Be Peace, Carl.
