It’s too bad this one wasn’t better. It could have been a lot of fun. Insttead, it’s releegated to cult status and is a delightful, but flawed romp. Arnold Schwarzenegger is obviously playing Conan, but they can’t call him Conan in this sword and sorcery adventure that introduced the world to Brigitte Nielsen, the towering,…
Tag: arnold schwarzenegger
Red Heat (1988) – Walter Hill
Red Heat has quite the pedigree. It has Walter Hill directing. It has a score by James Horner. And look at this cast, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Belushi, Peter Boyle, Gina Gershon, Laurence (as Larry) Fishburne, Brion James, Ed O’Ross, Pruitt Taylor Vince, and Mike Hagerty. That’s insane. Red Heat keeps Hill solidly in violent, and…
Raw Deal (1986) – John Irvin
I knew not all of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early work were going to be winners. And there was a reason I never wanted to take a chance on Raw Deal. From everything I’d seen, trailer and image wide it looked pretty horrible. Surprise, surprise I was right. It has a horrible soundtrack and score, and the…
Twins (1988) – Ivan Reitman
Arnold Schwarzenegger in shorts and converse is laugh-worthy on its own. From that first reveal I was in for the ride, and while some of it isn’t so great, there’s a lot of heart and laughs to be mined from this classic 1988 comedy. Julius (Schwarzenegger) is a product of a genetic experiment, and has…
Eraser (1996) – Chuck Russell
Arnold Schwarzenegger fights to save Vanessa Williams and stop an arms deal with terrorists in Eraser. The big guy is John Kruger, a U.S. Marshal who specializes in working the Witness Relocation Program. The opening sequence sets up his abilities and the aspects of the job which see him erasing Johnny C (Robert Pastorelli) to…
Kindergarten Cop (1990) – Ivan Reitman
“It’s not a tumour!” It’s a catchphrase that found its way into the pop culture and has resurfaced over and over. And I never saw it originally. I was never interested in watching Arnold Schwarzenegger be funny. It just didn’t sound like a good time to me. So now, some thirty-plus years on, I finally…
The Long Goodbye (1973) – Robert Altman
I’m probably stepping into a minefield here, but I’m not the biggest Robert Altman fan. Who doesn’t love The Player? And as great as M*A*S*H is, I came to it by way of the television series, so it never resonated with me as much as I would have liked. That being said, I really liked…
Escape Plan (2013) – Mikael Hafstrom
Escape Plan feels like a bit of an action throwback and leans into the escapist (pun intended) entertainment of the 80s and early 90s. And what better way to do that than with two of the biggest stars of the 80s Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger? Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a professional escape artist. He…
The Running Man (1987) – Paul Michael Glaser
Paul Michael Glaser best known to some as Starsky from the iconic 70s television series, Starsky & Hutch, slips into the director’s chair to put Arnold Schwarzenegger through his paces as Ben Richards aka The Running Man. Based loosely on the Stephen King novel which he wrote under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, the story is…
The Last Action Hero (1993) – John McTiernan
When it was first released The Last Action Hero, which saw Arnold Schwarzenegger reteamed with Predator director John McTiernan, and featuring a script that Shane Black was involved in, the film flopped, failed to find an audience, and marked Arnold’s first failure at the box office. Time has been kind to the film, and rewatching…
The Mind Reels 