Lately, Arnold Schwarzenegger has seemed to be in a slump. Ever since the popularity of the “Terminator” movies, he has struggled through a succession of fizzling action flicks and lame comedies.
With the release of “Eraser,” Arnold is back: big, bad, and entertaining as ever.
In this movie, Schwarzenegger plays John Kruger, a one-man witness security team. Most of the time, he protects bad guys whose lives are in danger because they’re going to squeal on other bad guys.
Kruger gives his “clients” the full treatment. He usually sets up an elaborate plan to fake their death, and gives them new identities. In the first ten minutes of the film, his character is developed as much as it will be as he singlehandedly stops two men trying to kill his clients and then blows up the scene before the police get there.
Enter Vanessa Williams. She plays Lee Cullen, a computer technician at a large company making top-secret weapons for the U.S. government. Williams isn’t exactly who I would’ve thought of to play a brilliant techno-freak but, somehow, it works.
The company she works for appears to be selling weapons to sources other than the U.S. government, and the F.B.I. uses her to steal important information from the company’s computers. She gets caught in the act, but narrowly escapes the security on her tail.
So Kruger is assigned to protect her. The rest of the movie basically is a lot of bad guys getting killed, Arnold killing a lot of bad guys, and and Arnold using a bunch of cool weapons to kill a lot of bad guys, to save the world, especially Lee Cullen.
“Eraser” is the perfect summer movie, and Schwarzenegger is the perfect summer movie star. He is big and strong enough to make the viewer believe that he can kill several men at a time, yet he still smiles, and cracks jokes we can laugh at.
The supporting cast is not too shabby, either. Robert Pastorelli, as one of Kruger’s former clients, is hilarious. He uses his great comic timing to steal every scene he’s in. Also, James Caan is the ideal clever, conniving villain, as always.
As I’ve said, “Eraser” is a great summer flick. It’s non-stop entertaininment, keeps you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end, but doesn’t make you think for a second of it. The plot is as complex as an episode of “Beavis and Butthead,” but you’ll leave the theater glad that you went.
Grade: A-