Action Point (2018)

Directed by: Tim Kirkby | 84 minutes | comedy | Actors: Johnny Knoxville, Eleanor Worthington-Cox, Chris Pontius, Dan Bakkedahl, Johnny Pemberton, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Eric Manaka, Joshua Hoover, Connor McVicker, Michael Everson, Aidan Whytock, Matthew Peterson, Aidan Scott, Ashley Dickerson, Matt Schulze , Camilla Wolfson, Patrick De Langhe

What do you get when you combine ‘Jackass’ with a loosely truth-based story about a deadly amusement park? ‘Action Point’. Johnny Knoxville plays DC, an amusement park owner in the west of America who doesn’t follow the rules about safety too closely. As a result, he is in danger of losing both his amusement park and custody of his daughter. Johnny Knoxville is best known for his work in ‘Jackass’, the series in which he performs the craziest stunts. Its popularity is mainly around and just after the turn of the century. What follows are some movies and spin-offs, with mixed results. This now also includes ‘Action Point’ with a ditto effect.

The acting is not of the highest level, but the question is whether you find that annoying as a viewer. Ultimately, the ultimate trademark is the stunts they perform. Unfortunately there aren’t enough of them to make up for ‘Action Point’. There is clearly a search in the story for moments to hurt Knoxville and that is at the expense of the persuasiveness of that story. It’s a flimsy shell that doesn’t captivate enough and really just gets in the way. In addition, choices have been made in the story that have little or no positive effect on the whole. For example, there is a storyline in which DC’s daughter carries papers that would make her mother’s new boyfriend her guardian. This is done so clumsily and ends with such a predictable result that it almost becomes funny. So the film could have benefited from a better focus on the stunts and less on the framing. It’s quite telling that the end credits cutscene, in which you see the stunts from a different, “real” perspective, is the funniest and most authentic part of the entire film.

Not everything is bad about ‘Action Point’. The interaction between the actors (and especially between Knoxville and former Jackass operative Chris Pontius) is good and it feels like the makers themselves had a lot of fun making the film. Where in the case of the series ‘Jackass’ this led to one of the successful features, in ‘Action Point’ it is mainly the positive outlier in a film that is just too little of everything.