Raw Deal (John Irvin, 1986)

A strange amalgamation of Miami Vice-like style -- a constantly tracking camera, glitzy locations, shimmering glass and towering modernity -- with Arnold. Even in fancy suits his hulking, enormous frame looks completely out of place. Which I guess is something of the point. In the high life world of corruption and murder, who can one trust but the completely ridiculous, Superman embodied that is Arnold Schwarzenegger. But, unfortunately, the film takes this implication at face value, rather than trying to exploit his mythic figure as a satirical statement about ourselves, as Mark L. Lester did a year earlier in Commando. We trust Arnold because he is one of the good guys, and of course anyone who has ever done anything bad to Arnold is one of the bad guys. Unlike most films involving undercover police work, this one is completely uninterested in the moral grey area that can come from working alongside the so-called enemy. Instead, it ends with a rather abrupt and kinetically vacuous shootout, where Arnold gets revenge on all the bad guys by shooting them to pieces, then is rewarded with commendations, his old job back, etc. etc. It's the usual macho cop fantasy storyline, existing in a world where shooting a hundred people has no repercussions.

The vacuousness of the finale is the real disappointment, however. Up until that point the film had handled its action sequences with a certain joyous aplumb. A vehicular chase at a lumber yard early on showed a speed and weightiness that is generally lacking in today's digitally recreated stunts (not all, of course, but it seems like most). And a fist fight in an alley began with some neat tension, exploiting long shadows and a certain ryhthmic, careful pace. So it's too bad to see it all go down the drain for what should be the biggest part, but I suppose gun fights between a bunch of guys and the decidedly not-acrobatic Arnold would be difficult to choreograph in any interesting way, and John Irvin doesn't have Lester's cheeky sense of humor to fall back on. So the movie is a failure, but by no means as big a failure as many others would likely suggest. And the reason for its failure doesn't have much to do with its laughable script (which is quite bad, but I don't know who would expect otherwise).