Eraser (1996)

Eraser (1996): Dir: Chuck Russell / Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vanessa Williams, James Caan, Robert Pasterelli, James Coburn: Arnold Schwarzenegger plays an agent who helps victims erase their past by staging their death. Title doesn't work because the memory remains. He erases Vanessa Williams who possesses a disc. Director Chuck Russell previously made The Mask and he seems to have a flair for ideas that fail to translate. Opening sequence bares little importance and the structure deteriorates into graphic violence. Schwarzenegger uses nearly every cliché in the book and runs full steam after having a spike rammed through one shoulder. James Caan is typecast as the villain who seems like a replica of countless other villains he has played. Williams is the typical damsel protected by Schwarzenegger and on the run with information that is in her possession. Robert Pasterelli appears as a previous client whom is saved in the opening but the role is mere cardboard. James Coburn makes this one of his worst appearances, which is a set back considering what he is capable of. Graphic violence throughout including a scene where several thugs are mangled by crocodiles. Do the filmmakers deem this necessary or is it just for the sake of entertainment? Theme could have examined identity but its brutality and gore are the very elements that should have been erased. Score: 3 / 10

US Marshal John Kruger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an expert at erasing identities at WITSEC. Chief Beller (James Coburn) assigns Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams) to him. She's a whistle-blower at defense contractor Cyrez Corporation. After getting the evidence for the government, she is resistant to WITSEC and killers come after her with high-tech weapons. Fellow Marshal Robert DeGuerin (James Caan) tells Kruger that someone is killing witnesses.It's a nice action thriller. There are lots of gun action. The body count is pretty good. Arnold gets to hang out of a plane and battle some crocodiles. It probably needs a few more wisecracks to be as fun as some of Arnold's best. The one-liners aren't quite as good. I like it but people may be tired of his big action movies by that point.

John Kruger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a US Marshal who specialises in Witness Protection. Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams) is an employee of CYREZ who, with the assistance of the FBI attempts to infiltrate her own organisation as it is believed that her boss William Donohue (James Cromwell) is selling weapons illegally on the black market. Cullen manages to acquire a disk which contains vital evidence regarding the illicit deal, but when those that Donohue are working for find out that Cullen has this piece of evidence, they set about doing everything they can to silence her and it's down to John Kruger to do his best to protect her; As action thrillers go this is fairly generic with very little in the way of surprises. However, the story is constantly engaging and the action never really lets up throughout the 115 minute running time. Caan was solid as always and I also felt that Vanessa Williams was also fairly convincing in her respective role. The film also has quite a lot of 'tongue in cheek' humour running through it such as when Kruger parachutes out of a plane and lands in a car compound and asks a couple of kids where he is and they just reply 'Earth'. Another funny moment is when Kruger catches up with Cullen and she says 'You're late' and Kruger replies 'Traffic'. It just showed that the film maker's managed to make a serious film, but not one that took itself too seriously. Michael Bay does this a lot (I know that he has a lot of haters, but I meant this as a compliment).Whilst I'm all for fun and things not always being taken seriously in actions films, I do get bothered when filmmaker's create set pieces that defy the law of physics in order to make things more exciting; there is a scene on the aircraft where Arnie opens the door at a relatively high altitude. However, for some reason he isn't sucked out of the door even when he's sat next to it and seemingly doesn't have to hold onto anything to stay in the aircraft. Then a short while later, he finds himself clinging onto the edge of the door on the outside of the plane (Laws of Physics have now been remembered) and then he lets go and manages to avoid being sucked into one of the engines which is directly behind him (admittedly it was on fire, but surely it still would have had enough force to suck him into the engine rather than under it). Exciting? Yes, Plausible? Hell no!!!!!Then the following scene shows him chasing a parachute through the sky (which has clearly been ripped off from the start of Moonraker)Then we come to Arnie himself, whilst there's no denying that he's not the best of actors, I personally feel that he is one of the best when it comes to delivering the 'One Liners' - he seems to do it in a dry sort of way which just almost seems effortless. Of course, he's also such a big screen presence that he doesn't always need much dialogue to be awesome (think about the first Terminator film - how many lines did he actually have in that film and he was still brilliant and so was that film).In summary, this is a fairly generic film which we have seen several times before with very few surprises. However, it's serviceable because the story is good, the performances from the main cast are good and the film never lags or loses momentum for one minute. Whilst, it's far from being Arnie's best (admittedly the bar has been set high with films like T2, T1, Predator etc) this is still a very good film which seems to have been overlooked by a lot of people. Definitely worth watching!

Arnie's career was really losing steam by the time Eraser came around. After all he'd played every role that suited him, often multiple times. The robot. The soldier. The cop. The special agent. The ummm… barbarian.And believe it or not, as IMDb is my witness, he played ALL of those characters more than once by this time, the only difference sometimes being the Eastern European country he was supposed to have come from.So by this stage Schwarzenegger was sorta grasping at straws, the result often being awful and often recycled projects that played with his image and in desperation introduced more and more illogical and ridiculous hooks and sequences.Take Eraser, where the bad guys have heat detecting scopes on their RAY GUNS(!) that go bing-bing-bing and cut through anything in their path, and Arnie gets to kill a 90s style CGI alligator and after consigning it to its fate declares it 'luggage'. (You know what? That bit still makes me laugh.) Arnie plays John Kruger, a guy who doesn't officially exist, whose specialty is making it look like people in need of protection don't exist to keep them safe from various nefarious high-ups and/or low lives. Hence the 'erasing' reference of the title, he erases them from being… mostly without even killing them! This time however the case is a young employee who is a key witness against a Big (evil) Corporation that is illegally making the naughty bing-bing-bing weapons.Eraser actually sports a fairly string cast of mainly James'; Coburn, Caan and Cromwell all get turns at being bad guys or Arnie's superiors… or both. And Vanessa Williams is the damsel in distress in need of the protection only Arnie's big gun could give.The rest of the film is a series of carefully conceived yet palpably ridiculous action setpieces that are technically proficient but lack any sense of true action goodness. The plane escape sequence is fine, the zoo chase scene OK (featuring the afore-mentioned luggage) and the finale at the docks gives Arnie the chance to wield the big guns for himself. Two of them actually. But aside from these moments Eraser marks the point in Arnie's career where the enjoyment was primarily derived from mocking his butchering of the English language. To that point this was merely an added bonus in between the action.I think the scriptwriters spent more time coming up with short dialogue snippets that would sound funnier coming out of Arnie's lips – which is almost everything really – my favourite here was how he managed to turn the 4 syllables of "I work alone" into about 17… I wanted to like Eraser, and as a guilty 2 hour throwaway it served its purpose I guess. But after the 80s and 90s spoiled us (and Arnie) by casting him as super-soldiers, FBI/KGB agents and Terminators it just seems like after a decade of Coke you are forced to switch to Royal Cola for eternity. Sure it's still cola, but… Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Need more evidence that this was the beginning of the end? Arnie's 5 films after Eraser: Jingle all the Way, Batman & Robin, End of Days, The 6th Day and Collateral Damage. I might argue that this was his last vaguely average film if I could summon the energy.