DIRECTOR
Chuck
Russell
SCREENWRITERS
Tony
Puryear
Walon Green
STORY
BY
Tony
Puryear
Walon Green
Michael S. Chernuchin
PRODUCERS
Anne Kopelson
Arnold Kopelson
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Adam Greenberg
MUSIC
Alan Silvestri
EDITOR
Michael Tronick
CAST
Arnold Schwarzenegger (John Kruger)
James Caan (Deguerin)
Vanessa Williams (Dr. Lee Cullen)
James Coburn (Beller)
Robert Pastorelli (Johnny C.)
James Cromwell (Donohue)
Danny Nucci (Monroe)
Roma Maffia (Claire Isaacs)
Melora Walters (Darleen)
K. Todd Freeman (Duton)
Camryn Manheim (Nurse)
Camille Winbush (Camille)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 115m
U.S. release: June 21, 1996
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
Other Chuck
Russell films
reviewed on this website:
- The
Scorpion King
|
Here's
how you know Eraser is a total guy movie: When you leave
the theater, all you want to talk about is the guns. These guns
-- the movie's McGuffin, the thing the bad guys will kill for
-- are serious guns indeed. They come equipped with some x-ray
device that scans through thick walls to zero in on their prey;
the force of the laser blast will knock you right through the
aforementioned thick walls. Guys could watch this all day. Arnold
Schwarzenegger doesn't even have to show up.
He just barely shows up anyway. Not that Arnie doesn't sweat
and bleed as much as usual. It's just that he usually has some
fun with his granite persona (think of his witty work in True
Lies), and he doesn't this time. In Eraser, Arnie
plays yet another super-agent -- he wipes out the identities
of federal witnesses -- but it's as if his own identity had been
deleted, too. He's just an efficient war machine here, a Homeric
version of Tom Cruise's character in Mission
Impossible.
Eraser is pure no-frills action, which may not sound bad
-- Speed
did pretty well with just a bus. But Speed (and other
great modern action movies) achieved a kind of beautiful idiocy
-- Zen for frat boys. Eraser is more often just idiotic,
with none of the true wildness that can goose a movie like Die
Hard past popcorn thrills and into something close to art.
The script, credited to Tony Puryear and Walon Green, could have
been spat out of a Macintosh on one of those screenwriting software
packages that combine different plot points from past hits. Arnie
the Eraser has to protect Vanessa Williams, an FBI employee who
discovers illegal government deals involving those cool super-guns.
It's the sort of plot you've seen so many times before that you
forget exactly where you've seen it before, though you
know it probably worked better then.
The director, Chuck Russell, has an interesting track record
that Eraser doesn't fit into. He did the third Nightmare
on Elm Street installment, one of the more imaginative entries
in the series; the gross-but-fun remake of The Blob; and
the whirligig Jim Carrey vehicle The Mask. Russell is
a fantasist, not a man of action, and the set pieces in Eraser
are blurry and half-hearted. He's in his element, though, in
the scenes involving the guns -- he has those freaky x-ray graphics
to conjure with.
Eraser does have a wild card, which isn't played nearly
enough. Robert Pastorelli, best known as Eldin the painter on
Murphy Brown, turns up as a former Mafia goombah whom
Arnie "erases." When called upon to return the favor
("Jeez," he grouses, "I thought you just wanted
me to help move a couch or something"), Pastorelli
takes part in a scheme involving pizza and Alka-Seltzer. Eraser
is worth seeing just for Pastorelli's expression when he realizes
his ruse is working far better than he intended.
If only there were more to it. You've seen the ads: Eraser
has a nice gag involving a parachute, and Russell does some nasty
business with alligators. But most of the movie is neither hot
nor cold -- just fast and undistinguished. It works so hard to
wipe the audience out that it ends up erasing itself. |
