ERASER
A film review by Rebecca Wan
Copyright 1996 Rebecca Wan
Directed by: Chuck Russell Written by: Michael S. Chernuchin, Walon Green, Tony Puryear Cast : Arnold Schwarzenegger (John Kruger, the Eraser), James Caan (Robert Deguerin), Robert Pastorelli (Johnny C), James Coburn (Beller), James Caan (Robert Deguerin, Vanessa Williams (Lee Cullen). Produced by : Warner Brothers Rating : ** out of *****
MY, HOW BIG YOUR GUNS ARE
Well I guess it's that time of the year again. The one time of the year where movie craftors are exonerated from the need to even *try* writing a script that has more dialogue than explosions. It's also the best time for the handful of existing bigtime Hollywood Mr Action Heroes to dust off their miniscule vocabularies, pull on their black vests and charge onto our screens tersely expirating what they hope will become memorable catchphrases. In America they call this time "summer" and it happens once every year. And maybe it's the exposure to all that nasty sun that does it, but in the process normally weak, insipid lines like "Consider this a divorce," "Hasta la vista, baby," and "You're the disease. I'm the cure" actually do end up being repeated more often then the phrases from my book of biblical proverbs. This is not entirely a bad thing, of course.
What am I talking about? I'm talking about the summer "blockbusters," the "action thrillers," the "this-obviously-cost-a-lot-so-you-know- everyone's-going-to-go" explosions, gas threats, flying saucers, and special effects. In the rash of "my, what big guns you have, but wait! mine are bigger" movies, there are also the usual boy-meets-fish-and-saves-environment movies (or whale, whatever), and *this* year, the odd crop of "save-the-world-from-aliens-or-environment- threats" offerings. I'm talking about the three BATMANS, the SPEEDS, the TERMINATORS, etc. This year I'm talking about TWISTER, INDEPENDENCE DAY, THE ARRIVAL, THE ROCK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, and of course, ERASER.
Here in Singapore, as our local movie critics like to whine, we seem to get the pick of the crop of "my explosion is more real-looking than yours" movies, but nothing else. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE opened in our theatres almost as soon as it did in the US. The same goes for ERASER, which is unfortunate for Arnold Schwarzenegger because coming so soon after what Time magazine recently called "Mission: Unavoidable" (on account of its worldwide mega-advertising blitz), ERASER seems like a cheaper, less thoughtful imitation. That's saying a lot, because MI the movie was already a cheap, thoughtless imitation of its TV originator of the '60s/'70s.
In ERASER, Arnie is a US federal marshall who relocates trial witnesses whose testimonies place their lives in danger. He does this by destroying all evidence of their present existence and re-situating them with new identities. His new case is Lee Cullen, played by Vanessa Williams who, unlike all the other scumbags he's ever relocated, is "an actual, real life honest person." Because she's so good, and has such nice legs, Arnold spends the whole movie trying to protect her, and only uses the opening movie sequence to save Robert Pastorelli from *his* killers. Lee obtains evidence that the high-technology weapons company she works for is secretly selling sophisticated, black-market arms to people with foreign accents and stringy hair. Of course, as the formula goes, her revealing this information will destroy the system as we know it because heck, there are people in high places who will go down with this, because yes, this is the biggest conspiracy in the history of the world (that is, America) since Watergate.
In protecting Lee, Arnold is framed by the mentor-turned-evil Robert Deguerin, nicely played by James Caan, and ends up having to prove that he isn't the one killing the programme's witnesses in addition to making sure Lee isn't accidentally torpedo-ed to death by the new, green guns his enemies all have. It's around this time that people in the theatre with me starting humming the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE theme, because Arnie's mission includes breaking into a high-security building to run a disk.
I guess I should tell you more about the particular gun everyone in this movie is so antsy about. It's an electro-magnetic pulse gun thing which fires aluminium missiles, and which can see through walls. It has some sort of X-ray vision, so its user can target the victim's heart even from great distances. Despite this, which I figure is a pretty cool feature in a gun (though I'm certainly no expert), however, Arnold, whose own heart is targeted a number of times, *never* goes flying 10 feet backwards with a two-foot missile through his chest like all the others who get shot by this gun. Instead he outruns and outsmarts his trackers each time, giving eery and ironic resonance to that TERMINATOR line that practically made him famous: "I'll be back."
Like everyone else in the theater, I left the movie feeling that the trailers had duped me, because they made me want to watch this movie voluntarily. Although there is a *lot* of violence in this movie, not to mention mutilation and some bloody tussles with alligators, I recommend this movie to most over-18s who need some therapeutic mindless action to get over the weirdness of FARGO or the hangover effect of LEAVING LAS VEGAS.
REVIEW's rating system:
* Wait for the video.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with
Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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