| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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ERASER
Rating: 
USA. 1996.
Director – Charles Russell, Screenplay – Walon Green & Tony Puryear, Story – Walon Green, Tony Puryear & Michael S. Chernuchin, Producers – Anne Kopelson & Arnold Kopelson, Photography – Adam Greenberg, Music – Alan Silvestri, Visual Effects Supervisor – John S. Sullivan, Visual Effects – Industrial Light and Magic, Illusion Arts, Mass.Illusion & Warner Digital Studios, Special Effects Supervisor – Terry Frazee, Makeup Effects – Steve Johnson’s XFX Inc, Animatronic Crocodiles – Kurtzman, Nictotero and Berger EFX, Production Design – Bill Kenney. Production Company – Warners.
Cast:
Arnold Schwarzenegger (John Krueger), James Caan (Robert DeGuerin), Vanessa Williams (Lee Cullun), Robert Pastorelli (James Casteleone), James Coburn (Arthur Beller), Andy Romano (Under Secretary Daniel Harper)
Plot: John Krueger is a Marshal with the FBI Witness Protection program whose job is to wipe out all trace of the lives of the people he relocates. He is assigned to protect Lee Cullun, a secretary with the Cyrez corporation who has offered the FBI proof that Cyrez is selling hi-tech weaponry to foreign countries. But as someone starts eliminating relocated witnesses, Krueger must go on the run from his own corrupt boss in order to protect Lee from people that want her erased.
’Schwarzenegger is back’ the publicity campaign for Eraser informed us. Not that one was aware that Schwarzenegger had really been away – he hadn’t made a film since Junior (1994) but one-and-a-half years hardly counts as an absence. Nevertheless Eraser was part of a concerted effort to convince us that we were seeing a new, more serious Schwarzenegger. In truth though there was little that seemed much different to the old Schwarzenegger of his Commando (1985), Raw Deal (1986), Predator (1987), The Running Man (1987) and Red Heat (1988) heyday. What Eraser did unwittingly presage though was the beginning of Schwarzenegger’s fall from box-office stardom. From around 1985 through to 1991 Schwarzenegger was the No. 1 action star. But in the 1990s and onwards, after successive flops like Batman & Robin (1997), End of Days (1999), The 6th Day (2000) and Collateral Damage (2002), Schwarzenegger’s stature has certainly started to seem far less than what it had once been.
Eraser is directed by Charles Russell. Russell, who had previously been known as Chuck Russell, had directed effects-heavy genre vehicles such as A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (1987), The Blob (1988) and The Mask (1994), and would go onto the unexceptional likes of Bless the Child (2000) and The Scorpion King (2002). Eraser came with a budget that topped the $100 million mark. Schwarzenegger and a mega-budget – this was the same mix of ingredients that had made Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and one sat down expecting to be totally blown away in their seat. But the only thing one didn’t expect with such a combination is that Eraser would be the mega-bore that it is.
It is a film that has been designed as a series of spectacular self-contained set-pieces. No problem with that – that’s the way most big-budget action films are designed these days. And some of these sequences are quite impressive in themselves. One sequence in particular, no doubt borrowed from the James Bond film Moonraker (1979), involving Schwarzenegger jumping out of a plane without a parachute, had one on the edge of the seat. And there’s another impressive sequence later on with a series of attacking crocodiles loose at the New York zoo. But in both cases the spectacularity of these scenes is undercut by their very improbability. The parachute sequence descends quickly into the very silly with Schwarzenegger succeeding in single-handedly holding off an oncoming jetliner with a mere handgun and then surviving a fall out of a plane without a parachute by landing onto the roof of a car. Similarly the crocodile sequence is impressive but improbability keeps intruding – most zoos keep their wild animals overfed to avoid them attacking patrons and it is not at all believable that a horde of unleashed crocodiles would suddenly attempt to eat every person in sight. There are other times the film descends into absolute silliness. There is one sequence with Robert Pastorelli faking a heart attack only to find himself being fibrillated by paramedics while still conscious – the idea that health professionals would apply a fibrillator to a person who is not only conscious but also yelling at them is just absurd. Aside from the parachute sequence and the crocodiles (somewhat), the rest of the action is utterly routine. There are lots of explosions, a climactic fight in the air over the docklands and a hi-tech energy weapon that looks quite impressive, but it’s all fairly forgettable. Certainly it leaves one wondering where all the $100 million ended up being spent. Many direct-to-video action films do considerably more with budgets fifty times less than this.
Schwarzenegger plays a little more seriously than usual. But not too much – the one-liners eventually creep back in and his performance is still one-note, a considerable call from the reinvention of his image that some tried to call the film. Vanessa Williams makes almost zero impression. All the fun in the film is had by James Caan who puts everything he can into the villainy and succeeds in effortlessly dominating the show.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1996
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