Raw Deal (1986)

Continuing my plan to watch every Arnie movie in order, I come to Raw Deal.

Plot In A Paragraph: Mark Kaminski (Arnie) a former FBI agent turned small town sheriff, agrees to help the FBI chief infiltrate the Chicago mafia.

Following 4 movies in two years Arnie only had Raw Deal released in 1986. I don't know if this movie has any fans here. But I am not one.

Arnies acting seems to have gone backwards. There is none of the charisma shown in Commando, maybe if there was, it wouldn't be as bad. But Arnie plays it very straight, no hint of tongue in cheek. And it's to the movies detriment.

The Oaks biggest asset is his charisma. Here he can't even answer a telephone convincingly, and the less said about how he awkwardly places a coffee cup on the table the better!! He just comes off as any other poor actor with an impressive physique. In fact this role could have been played by any such actor.

In fact it probably should have, Arnie struggles with the dialogue, and it makes him look bad, throw in some unconvincing fight scenes and it's not a good watch. At least in amongst the camp cheesy fun of Commando, the shootout at the gravel pit would have fit in, here it is awful.

Ed Lauter is wasted, Sam Wannamkaer is never convincing as a ruthless mobster. Even Robert Davi (normally a perfectly fine bad guy) is poor here, The love interest is ridiculous, The rest of cast is rounded out by people who just seem to have been the cheapest alternative.

Arnies long time friend Sven-Ole Thorsen turns up as Bearded Bodyguard after roles in both Conan movies and Red Sonja.

Raw Deal only gets two mentions in Arnie's autobiography Total Recall. The first is "In the months before the wedding, I was busy promoting Commando and shooting Raw Deal - the action movie I'd promised to make for Dino De Laurentis- and getting ready to start Predator" And the second is when he is talking about the movie Total Recall, how De Laurentis had the rights to it, but wouldn't cast him. The first time he tried to make it, he cast Richard Dreyfuss, and when it went into development hell, he left. Then he he tries again, and this time he gave Patrick Swayze the role. He says "I was peed Dino didn't give me the part, he knew I wanted it. Instead he gave me Raw Deal."

Amazingly Raw Deal was the 54th highest grossing movie of 1986 with $26 million at the domestic box office.

Excluding Red Sonja (because he refused to do any promotional work) this would be the lowest grossing movie with Arnie in a lead role for a long time.

In a quirky twist of fate, this movies failure, sent De Laurentis into bankruptcy and he had to sell the rights to Total Recall, which Arnie convinced Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna at Carolco to buy as a project for him.

Just remember one thing kids "You shouldn't drink and bake"

Fmovies: Don't be angry with me for only awarding "Raw Deal" 5 stars out of 10. It's a 'strong, almost a 6' 5, not a 'weak, barely above a 4' 5. If that makes any sense.

I think that part of the problem is that I saw this after I saw "Terminator" and "Commando", and it was a bit of a let-down. (And I might have been suffering from a bit of "Schwarzenegger-overexposure".) Arnold is a bit wasted here. It's as if someone mistakenly cast him in a role meant for someone like Chuck Norris. Let's face it, this is a smaller scale movie with a seemingly smaller budget; Dolph Lundgren or Rutger Hauer or Micheal Biehn or even that guy from "Eddie And The Cruisers" could have filled in for the S-man in this movie and you would hardly have noticed the difference, except for a few one-liners. Not to mention the director for "Raw Deal" seemed to be nowhere near Cameron's or Lester's class. Same thing goes for the cast (with all respect to Darren McGavin and Robert Davi). Kathryn Harrold is not a substitute for Linda Hamilton. She's OK, but she's a Ford Taurus to Hamilton's Corvette Stingray.

There are pacing problems, too. The screenwriter felt the need to include several filler sequences that are meant to advance the plot and fill in back story and give the other cast members something to do. But most of these sequences are pretty lackluster: a fistfight in a women's clothing store goes nowhere; a romantic confrontation between Davi and Harrold leaves no lasting impact (though it does let Harrold get off a good put-down line); and the 10 minute car chase scene where a crime boss winds up hamburger is an exercise in by-the-numbers padding if there ever was one (good sound design, though).

But the last 20 minutes serves as a payoff to the first part of the film, and it is basically one long bullet-fest. Arnold basically shoots everything short of LAWs and RPGs at the bad guys, and they obligingly miss with all their shots and fall over and die. None of this is staged with anything like the panache of the firefights in "Commando" or the desperate high speed run-and-gun highway fights in "Terminator". It's all very meat-and-potatoes stuff that wouldn't have be out of place in a typical Cannon/Golan-Globus production. But there's plenty of it, and the S-man is appropriately grim and indestructible, and any fan will be satisfied once the final bad guy goes down in the final hail of bullets.

After 3 viewings, I still don't understand why no one can hit the huge, slow-moving white guy when they shoot at him, but it's his movie, so I'll just attribute it to Arnold's penchant for bringing a Browning Automatic Rifle to a revolver fight, and let it pass.

And I don't discount this movie just because it was an Arnold vehicle - I felt that his follow-up "The Running Man" was a return to form (although still not as good as "Terminator" and "Commando").

Anyway, "Raw Deal" doesn't place in the top 5 (or even 10) Arnold films, but any Schwarzenegger completist will want to have it, and will probably find much to enjoy. And fans of "Crime Story" and gangster films in general will also find this to their liking.

Arnold takes on the entire Chicago syndicate run by mob chief Luigi Petrovita, Sam Wanamaker, with predictable results.

Arnold, Mark Kaminski, is canned from the FBI because he was too rough with the bad guys and told by his boss Baxter, Joe Regalbuto, to "resign or be prosecuted". Now working in a dead end job as a lawman in some hick town in North Carolina a friend of his from the FBI Harry Shannon, Darren McGavin, gets in touch with Arnold for help in the death of his son who was killed in a mob attack on a FBI safe house.

Harry tells Anold that there's a mole in the FBI's higher ups that's tipping off the mob on what the FBI has as informers and witnesses and where there being kept from the mob to live long enough to testify against it and is responsible for his son's death. Arnold goes undercover as a hood and joins the mob to find out who's working with them from the FBI and bring him to justice in this action-packed Arnold Schwarznegger vehicle; and just guess who the FBI mole is?

A must for Schwarznegger fans with Arnold, for the first time in his movie career, speaking whole sentences and showing some sensitivity in scenes with his love interests in the movie his wife Amy, Balnche Baker, to whom Arnold utters the movie best line " You shouldn't drink and bake at the same time". There's also Arnolds sexy mob girlfriend Monique, Kathryn Harrold, whom he avoids having any action with and has no idea that Arnold is an undercover lawman as well as a loyal and happily married man.

Great action sequences sprinkled all throughout the film with a tremendous and unbelievable shoot-out at the end of the movie to the explosive and thumping music score of "The Kaminski Stomp" which raises the adrenaline level of the theater audience to it's limits.

Raw Deal fmovies. I have been soaking up a lot of vicarious aggression lately with Van Damme, Stallone, and Ahnuld. I bet a lot of Arnie's fans have missed this little gem. No, we don't look for quality here, but Schwarzenegger does a credible job of acting and he keeps throwing out these funny lines that keep you in stitches.

Nothing original here - failed FBI agent, now small town Sheriff (think Bruce Willis in Hostage or Striking Distance, Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone, or many others who are out in the cold because of their screw-ups or someone's evil deed - called to infiltrate the mob and bring them down.

You know Arnie's going to get the job done with muscle and firepower. He even manages a little romance - damn little - with Kathryn Harrold.

Paybacks are hell!

This is a great film for what it purports to be. It's an action picture, but it also has curious storyline that keeps one interested in Joey P. Brenner's travails, and it's not all that predictable until the very end. Moreover, it does have a human element at times (plus we see a still-massive Arnold sporting a wife-beater). Granted, Arnold doesn't have much depth of dialogue, but it's not Shakespeare. I don't understand why everyone else dislikes "Raw Deal" to such an intense degree, as one must first understand where it is coming from. It is a fun film, one of the few Schwarzenegger films that is a must-have on dvd.

'Raw Deal' is for me somewhat of a tough film to rate and review. It is not a great, or even a good, film and is as close to ridiculous as Arnold Schwarznegger films get. At the same time, it's difficult to be too hard on 'Raw Deal' because there is some entertainment value.

Let's start with the good things. Schwarznegger is not the greatest of actors and never has been, but he has always had a hugely charismatic screen presence, a larger-than-life likability and a knack for action sequences. One gets all of this from his performance in 'Raw Deal', even with some expressionless and moments where he does struggle with lines he is immensely watchable and it is very vintage Schwarznegger. Generally it is the cast that come off best. Robert Davi is a rightly hiss-able bad guy and Kathryn Harrold has charm and sass. Sam Wanamaker and Paul Shenar make much of relatively little, they bring colourful menace to their stereotypical roles despite (particularly Shenar) being underused.

There are a few fun one-liners here and there and some excitement in the action. Can't say that on the whole as individual components the script and action were great, but the entertainment was there. The soundtrack is cool too and the scenery has atmosphere.

On the other hand, the story is not just ridiculous (even by Schwarznegger film standards) and generic but has too many scenes that feel like filler and either drag the story out or confuse it. A few nice one-liners here and there, but the script is quite weak and there is a lot of unintentional humour and next to no care developing the characters in a film littered with stereotypes (only Kaminski has any kind of development).

Action-wise, 'Raw Deal' is hardly amateurish and has some exciting moments but too much of it is too routine and a huge amount of suspension of disbelief is needed. Although the ending is certainly memorable, more so than most of the stuff before it, it's for all the wrong reasons. Visually, it has a low-budget made-for-TV-production-like look to it. Ed Lauter is pretty wasted and while the direction is competent it's never more than that.

In conclusion, watchable but doesn't feel cooked all the way through. 5/10 Bethany Cox