ERASER
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(WB) Directed by Charles Russell Written by Tony Puryear and Walon Green Cast Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vanessa Williams, James Caan, James Coburn, Robert Pastorelli MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for language and violence) Running Time 112 minutes Reviewed at The Wynnsong 10, Durham, NC (21JUN96)
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The new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is plotted like a series of old serials that have been combined and compressed, such that every ten minutes (or so) our hero must beat the clock to avoid another peril. Sirens! The cops are coming! Shots fired! The bad guys are coming! Parachute is tangled! The ground is coming! This methodical (and intentional?) approach is actually a *good* thing, given the patchwork of implausibilities, improbabilities, and other ignored concerns contained in the script. Arnie stars a steel-jawed U.S. Marshall who works for the Witness Protection Program and who has been assigned to protect-- at any cost-- a young woman (Vanessa Williams) who is blowing the whistle on her treasonous employer. The chutes and ladders involve a political conspiracy, some very high-tech weaponry, and, heaven help us, another mole inside of a secretive government agency.
Arnie's character is actually a variation on the Energizer Bunny. He gets stabbed, spiked, shot, crushed, blown-up, *and* dropped from a couple of different heights. None of the many writers (seven, I hear) thought to worry about his seeming invulnerability, any more than they thought to worry about describing a weapon as one that fires projectiles at "just below the speed of light." Help me. Granted, such head- scratchers are a trademark of the action genre, but too much of ERASER is carried too far. Or, rater, the action scenes which are supposed to *distract* us from such logic problems aren't carried far *enough*. Director Charles Russell (THE MASK) is new to the big-budget game and his set pieces are mostly modest in scope. That is, with two exceptions. Both a skydiving sequence and a roomful of escaped alligators are pure thrills. Bring a tissue, though, as you may get a nosebleed from going so far over the top.
Too erratic to be a "must see," ERASER is still recommendable for the smaller details. When Arnie is disguised as a delivery person, for example, the back of his jumpsuit reads "Let's Party." Or there's James Caan, as the boss gone bad, reacting to a throwing-knife wound: "I can't believe you nailed me with that cheap, mail-order shit!" Or, even better, the mobster who points to Arnie and asks: "Who's the tree trunk?" Other notable cast members include Babe's dad James Cromwell in one scene, James Coburn as the agency head, and Robert Pastorelli as Arnie's colorful, eleventh-hour sidekick. No one as dead-on as, say, either Tom Arnold or Charleton Heston in TRUE LIES, but they're amusing enough. (Nor is it every day that we get James Coburn stare down James Caan!) Finally, where would Schwarzenegger be without a handful of one-liners? The Terminator gets off a couple great ones that you're sure to hear elsewhere. There's also a classic exchange with two young kids, after Arnie drops from the sky into a junkyard. Very funny.
Grade: C+
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Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC
legeros@nando.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
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