In looking back to 1986, it seems that Raw Deal probably represents a lull in Arnie's career. Back then his only major hit had been the Terminator, so I imagine people must have seen him as a strange foreigner overblown with muscles and shooting and blowing up everything in sight. In watching Raw Deal again now for the first time since I was about 10 years old, I can't help thinking that people must have been more entertained by Arnie's bad acting than his action movie presence. The one liners in this thing are hilarious!
Now, he is very much a part of American culture and American film lore, which I think makes his bad acting in this movie even more entertaining, although sadly it doesn't make the movie any better. When I first saw it 20 years ago, I remember being deeply disappointed. The Terminator and Commando were my favorite movies in the world at that time, and I remember assuming that Raw Deal would be equally amazing to me, but it was a real let down.
It still is a let down, but as a hilarious bit of 80s bad action entertainment, it can still make for a pretty entertaining time. It's yet another one of those old action movies where Arnie with his thick accent plays an all-American guy, this time an FBI agent named Joseph Brenner living in exile for treating a suspect too roughly. He has been sent off to work as a small town sheriff, using his FBI training skills to bring down backwoods criminals.
His wife, however, is unimpressed with their new life in the small pond, and is growing increasingly irritated and irritating. One day Brenner comes home from work and he and his wife get into an argument that culminates in her throwing a freshly baked cake at him and one of his funniest lines in the entire movie "You should not drink and bake!"
So this is where it gets a little weird. An FBI agent approaches him and tells him about a sensitive situation where they need him to infiltrate a criminal organization and bring it down from the inside. The only problem is that no one can know about it. It's highly illegal, so only this one guy will know that Brenner is involved, so if anything goes wrong no one will be there to help him.
Sort of reminds me of First Blood Part 2, for some reason, but where I get lost is when they decide to fake Brenner's death, funeral and all, and I missed the part where they explained how successfully completing an illegal mission will get him reinstated in the FBI. Not the least reason for which, of course, is that they deemed the mission sufficiently important to completely destroy a petro-chemical plant in order to fake his death. Wouldn't they have some explaining to do after bringing down the crime boss? And wouldn't they have noticed that there was no body in his squad car at the site of the explosion?
At any rate, the rest of the movie is the kind of Commando-style action that Arnie is best at. He drives a tow truck through a building, casually destroys an illegal gambling den full of gamblers and bookies, and drives around shooting people from his car. Nice!
Raw Deal differentiates itself from some of Arnie's other bad action movies because it doesn't take itself seriously. It's basically over the top action just for fun. Just before driving the tow truck through a building and nearly bringing the entire thing down, they clever place a group of old people just in front of the truck's grill late at night so that Brenner can politely ask them to please step to the side and then remind him to turn on his headlights before he drives through the building. At one point, a man gets shot in the chest and shouts, "He got me!"
Yeah, no kidding! But of course my favorite one liner in the whole movie, followed closely by the cake-fight, is when someone asks Brenner, "Where are you going?" And he gives an answer that somehow perfectly illustrates the entire movie.
"I'm going to do what an old friend asked me to do. Knock 'em dead!"
Now, he is very much a part of American culture and American film lore, which I think makes his bad acting in this movie even more entertaining, although sadly it doesn't make the movie any better. When I first saw it 20 years ago, I remember being deeply disappointed. The Terminator and Commando were my favorite movies in the world at that time, and I remember assuming that Raw Deal would be equally amazing to me, but it was a real let down.
It still is a let down, but as a hilarious bit of 80s bad action entertainment, it can still make for a pretty entertaining time. It's yet another one of those old action movies where Arnie with his thick accent plays an all-American guy, this time an FBI agent named Joseph Brenner living in exile for treating a suspect too roughly. He has been sent off to work as a small town sheriff, using his FBI training skills to bring down backwoods criminals.
His wife, however, is unimpressed with their new life in the small pond, and is growing increasingly irritated and irritating. One day Brenner comes home from work and he and his wife get into an argument that culminates in her throwing a freshly baked cake at him and one of his funniest lines in the entire movie "You should not drink and bake!"
So this is where it gets a little weird. An FBI agent approaches him and tells him about a sensitive situation where they need him to infiltrate a criminal organization and bring it down from the inside. The only problem is that no one can know about it. It's highly illegal, so only this one guy will know that Brenner is involved, so if anything goes wrong no one will be there to help him.
Sort of reminds me of First Blood Part 2, for some reason, but where I get lost is when they decide to fake Brenner's death, funeral and all, and I missed the part where they explained how successfully completing an illegal mission will get him reinstated in the FBI. Not the least reason for which, of course, is that they deemed the mission sufficiently important to completely destroy a petro-chemical plant in order to fake his death. Wouldn't they have some explaining to do after bringing down the crime boss? And wouldn't they have noticed that there was no body in his squad car at the site of the explosion?
At any rate, the rest of the movie is the kind of Commando-style action that Arnie is best at. He drives a tow truck through a building, casually destroys an illegal gambling den full of gamblers and bookies, and drives around shooting people from his car. Nice!
Raw Deal differentiates itself from some of Arnie's other bad action movies because it doesn't take itself seriously. It's basically over the top action just for fun. Just before driving the tow truck through a building and nearly bringing the entire thing down, they clever place a group of old people just in front of the truck's grill late at night so that Brenner can politely ask them to please step to the side and then remind him to turn on his headlights before he drives through the building. At one point, a man gets shot in the chest and shouts, "He got me!"
Yeah, no kidding! But of course my favorite one liner in the whole movie, followed closely by the cake-fight, is when someone asks Brenner, "Where are you going?" And he gives an answer that somehow perfectly illustrates the entire movie.
"I'm going to do what an old friend asked me to do. Knock 'em dead!"