Hurricane Smith (1992) Warner Bros./Action RT: 86 minutes Rated R (violence, language, nudity, sex, drugs) Director: Colin Budds Screenplay: Peter Kinloch Music: Brian May Cinematography: John Stokes Release date: March 1992 (Philadelphia, PA) Cast: Carl Weathers, Jurgen Prochnow, Cassandra Delaney, Tony Bonner, David Argue, John Ewart, Louise McDonald, Suzie MacKenzie, Karen Hall, Johnny Raaen, Glenn Ruehland, Matt Keys, Wayne Parry, Ric Anderson, Charles Green. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ** ½
As a bona fide film geek, one of my greatest disappointments is Carl Weathers not becoming a huge action star on par with Stallone and Schwarzenegger. After years of playing second fiddle in movies like Rocky I-IV and Predator, he was finally given his own starring vehicle with the neo-blaxploitation actioner Action Jackson. It was a great movie that should have catapulted Weathers into the stratosphere, but it didn’t and I don’t know why. All I know is that I didn’t hear of Weathers again until Hurricane Smith.
Filmed in 1990, Hurricane Smith sat on the shelf for nearly two years before Warner quietly snuck it into theaters during a notoriously slow period at the box office. It was released without fanfare or advance screenings. I knew next to nothing about it when I went to see it one weekday afternoon after classes ended for the day. I was excited because I figured it had to be awesome with a title like Hurricane Smith. Oh, how naïve I was! Action Jackson Down Under, it’s NOT.
Directed by some bloke named Colin Budds, Hurricane Smith is a slice of Ozploitation starring Weathers as the title character, a Texas construction worker who goes to Australia’s Gold Coast to find his missing sister after their mother dies. Soon after he arrives, he learns she’s mixed up with drugs and prostitution. His attempt to locate her gets him in trouble with a crime syndicate and its second-in-command, a sadistic little twerp named Charlie (Prochnow, Das Boot). His boss Fenton (Bonner, Quigley Down Under) wants the American out of the way before a big drug deal with a rival gang goes down.
Smith is helped by his sister’s bff Julie (Delaney, 1984’s One Night Stand), a hooker with a heart of gold who wants to get out of the life and away from Charlie, a nasty piece of work who takes great delight in threatening and terrorizing her. Predictably, they become lovers. Who didn’t see that coming? Uh, NOBODY! He’s also helped by her pimp with a heavily tarnished heart of gold, a diminutive fellow named Shanks (Argue, BMX Bandits), and grandfather Griff (Ewart, The Quest), a disagreeable sort who refers to him as a “septic” (derogatory term for Americans derived from “septic tank” and “Yank”). Who says you don’t learn something new every day?
Hurricane Smith is a perfect example of the kind of movie they just don’t make anymore. I know it sounds weird to say this, but let me explain. It’s the kind of movie made to play as a co-feature on a double bill with an A-list title like Lethal Weapon 3. Sadly, theaters stopped showing double features by the time it came out. Too bad, it might have gotten a little more attention than it did. It came and went in a week.
For the most part, Hurricane Smith isn’t terrible. In fact, it’s pretty okay. Its biggest problem is that it doesn’t have enough action, especially in the lagging middle section. There’s some, like a cool chase featuring a bus crashing/exploding through a food truck, but nowhere near as much promised by the tagline- “The man who put the ‘Action’ in Jackson now puts the ‘Hurricane’ in Smith”. It doesn’t really get going until the final half hour when Smith and company finally go after Charlie. We get a gun battle, boat chase and climactic fight on a helicopter. It’s fine, but Hurricane Smith still leaves something to be desired in the action department.
It’s strange seeing Weathers without a moustache, but it’s his only distinguishing character trait here. You might think you know why he’s nicknamed Hurricane, but you’re wrong. It has nothing to do with a tendency to leave a path of destruction in his wake when called into action. The real reason is rather arbitrary. When he was 14, he rescued his sister from a hurricane and people started calling him that. Now you know. ANYWAY, Weathers makes the best of what little he has to work with. The makers would like us to think his character is the next Action Jackson. There’s even a scene of him (shirtless and restrained) being beaten by Charlie’s goons in order to extract information. Nice try, guys.
Prochnow fares a little better as the villain of the piece. He adds a measure of camp to the proceedings as a psychopathic gangster not so secretly planning a hostile takeover of the local drug trade. Like everything else in Hurricane Smith, it’s completely predictable. Delaney is best described as a third-rate Nicole Kidman. The two Aussie-born actresses even resemble each other. Argue brings some comic relief as the reluctant sidekick with an inferiority complex. Ewart is also enjoyable as a cranky oldster who hates all things American except for Pontiacs.
As far as early 90s actioners go, Hurricane Smith has very little going for it. It’s absolutely generic in every conceivable way right down to Brian May’s score which he appears to have written in his sleep. To its credit, Budds makes nice use of its Australian setting with its sunny beaches, chic high-rise buildings and grimy back-alley gambling parlors where customers play the coin-toss game. Other than that, there’s nothing especially memorable about Hurricane Smith. It’s entertaining if you go into it with low expectations and I do mean LOW. Even then, it’s instantly forgettable.
