Eraser (1996)

Crappy film

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Usually i don't watch Schwarzy movies because it's dumb (but well done) action-violence flicks punctuated by his funny (silly) lines, except if the story is particularly original (like terminator, true lies).... Here, it's not the case as i understand that his (really simple) job is to give new papers and address to protected witness! Beyond, i don't understand anything and especially why dealing arms with a senator leads to such erasing!! Honestly i picked this movie for his witness, the cute Vanessa Williams. Caan is also good as the usual bastard and i'm amazed by such technology! My reaction to this high-tech is to know if it's real or not: in France, for example, in no way, our administration is as advanced as what is shown in the movie! At the end, it's not all bad but taken as a whole, it's however a bit boring for me, particularly flawed by a complicated story!

U.S. Marshal John Kruger (Arnie, who is credited simply as "Eraser" in the end credits) is...an eraser, a man who works for WITSEC, or "Witness Security", erasing the identities of people in the Witness Relocation Program so baddies won't find them and kill them. No one is better than Kruger at what he does, but he faces his toughest challenge yet when he's assigned to protect Lee Cullen (Williams), a woman on the run. After working with the FBI on a sting operation involving illegal gunrunning - especially as it relates to a high-tech new EMP gun - now all sorts of bad guys are after her, from corrupt U.S. bureaucrats to the Russian Mafia. (Not to be confused with Roma Maffia, who's in the movie). Kruger's rival is his former compatriot DeGuerin (Caan), who is a formidable nemesis, but Kruger's got plenty of tricks up his sleeve besides erasing people, as we'll clearly see. Will DeGuerin and the other baddies get ERASED...permanently? Eraser is probably one of the last, best Arnold movies. It's a fitting way to unofficially wrap up the "Golden Age" of his career of the 80's and 90's, because the movie is pure Hollywood ridiculous action in true Schwarzenegger style. It truly is an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, a genre unto itself, if that makes any sense. You pretty much have to love it. It's nice to see a younger, thinner, more agile Arnie, along with his unmistakable voice. Of course, he gets many classic one-liners to cap off many sequences. The fact that Kruger is supposed to be a U.S. Marshal, but becomes an unkillable superhero who for all intents and purposes can fly and survive grievous injuries with ease, is an oversight of the best kind, something the audience has to go with and couldn't do without, unless they wanted a much less entertaining movie.The whole thing is very 90's, with classic computers, including the very-new "Internet", and some now-vintage cell phones. The technology even helps Kruger with his job, stating on the screen "Prepare to Erase". But whether tiny budget or huge budget, action movies of the day had one thing in common: people after "the disc", in this case what appears to be some more hot technology, Minidisc. Someone always wants that darn disc. But you KNOW the action isn't taking place in the present time because James Caan smokes indoors in government buildings. That's the ultimate no-no. Only a true bad guy would do that.Besides Caan, we also have Vanessa Williams, who confronts James Cromwell, stating to him that at the Cyrez Corporation, "treason is part of the corporate strategy!" - which sounds like a perfect ad tagline for them. Williams has had a long and storied career, but is only really relevant to fans of this site as co-star of Under the Gun (1988) with Sam Jones. So, between this and that, her action pedigree is surprising and pretty respectable. While we often joke about the star singing the end credits song (like we've done for Jerry Trimble, etc.), in this case, Williams actually does, because this is a Hollywood production, after all, and they can get high-caliber talent. There is another rockin' tune that plays after the movie, which we suspect is Trevor Rabin's "Caught a Train", but we're not sure. As far as the soundtrack itself, there are those wailin' guitar squeals heard often, which we liked because we thought it was a throwback to the 80's.Watch out for a cameo from Sven-Ole Thorsen towards the end of the movie, uncredited, as a Russian thug. Evidently, he and Arnie are buddies. Arnie should have advised him against being in Fatal Combat (1997). Another familiar face for us who turned up briefly was Patrick Kilpatrick, which helped to seal Eraser's connection to other action movies of the day. We also liked seeing James Coburn, if it was a pretty small role, but in a movie filled with actors with distinctive voices (i.e. Arnold and Caan), he stood out. Pastorelli added energy as Arnold's sidekick, and full marks go to one Andy Romano, who played Undersecretary of Defense Daniel Harper. Romano is one of those character actors that has been in tons of stuff, but gets little acclaim or recognition. We try to celebrate these people, especially when they shine, and here he certainly does as one of DeGuerin's partners in crime.If what we've read is true, Eraser was a troubled production with many problems along the road to completion. It's one of those situations where there are many writers and people have to be brought in to do tons of rewrites. Maybe it's because some Law & Order people started the script, or heavyweights like Frank Darabont and even John Milius came in to polish things up, but, from a viewer's perspective, you really can't tell. Nor should you. The whole thing is improbable enough - any behind the scenes flaws are papered over invisibly to us. Eraser is classic, big-budget, Arnie Action All the Way - call us old-fashioned, but we really enjoyed it.

The 2-year gap between True Lies and Eraser forced some action fans into thinking that Big Arn had retired. He had delivered at least one action movie per year since Terminator. Eraser had an awesome trailer, to the tune of Enigma's wonderful "I Love You, I'll Kill You", that rocked my world in the summer of 1996. I saw virtually every blockbuster that year, and the Eraser trailer was attached to every one of them. It came out out in the UK in the very last week of summer (and my first week back at school). I saw it at the now demolished UCI cinema in Edinburgh with a sold-out audience, mostly filled with guys out for a "lad's night". The movie was rated 18, and even though I was 3 years below that mark, I still got in, which was fortunate since the cinema version is the only uncut version of the film that has ever been released in the UK. For its VHS and DVD release the mad BBFC saw fit to cut 4 minutes from Eraser, turning it into an incomprehensible mess. It capped-off an awesome summer season (or so my 15-year-old self thought), and put to rest any fears that Big Arn was slowing down (although he has only made 5 action movies, to date, since then).Arn is John Kruger (an amusing choice of name since director Chuck Russell also made the 3rd Nightmare on Elm Street Movie), a Witness Protection Program Agent who is tasked with 'erasing' and protecting a high-level informant who can prove that there are traitors within the US government who are selling weapons to Russian terrorists. Naturally the informant is the lovely, and wide-eyed, Vanessa Williams, who involves herself in a subdued romantic subplot with Kruger. James Caan and the always great James Coburn provide respectable support as Kruger's antagonist and mentor, but the best support is no doubt Robert Pastorelli (an actor who I really liked who died of a heroin overdose in 2004), who plays a previous witness who is eager to please Kruger in his latest, impossible quest.Overall, it's hardly revolutionary, but what makes Eraser stand out from the crowd is the utterly breathtaking (literally) scene in which Kruger escapes a jet, mid-flight, without the comfort of a parachute on his shoulders. It's definitely one of the best action scenes in the last 20 years and, let me tell you, when that scene climaxed in the cinema, the packed audience of 'lads' totally sucked the air out of the auditorium. A massively exciting, and completely exhilarating, scene that never fails to get your heart racing.Alan Silvestri's score is one of the film's more underrated features. Silvestri scored Big Arn's Predator, a famous score in its own right, and while Eraser is not as famous as Predator you should not rule out the integrity of the score. When separated from the movie it is still one of Silvestri's best efforts.I guess the only complaint I could have about Eraser is that it's kinda anti-climatic. The best scene occurs at the end of the second act, leaving the final act pale in comparison. There's no iconic imagery to the film and it seems kinda forgettable when compared to other Arn characters who have endured the test of time. Nonetheless, it's at the top of the bottom of Arn's best movies, but make sure you the version you watch has not been butchered by the BBFC.The Blu Ray is in 2.40:1 1080p with Dolby TrueHD sound. Extras are non-existent.

Arnie's career was really losing steam by the time Eraser came around. After all he'd played every role that suited him, often multiple times. The robot. The soldier. The cop. The special agent. The ummm… barbarian.And believe it or not, as IMDb is my witness, he played ALL of those characters more than once by this time, the only difference sometimes being the Eastern European country he was supposed to have come from.So by this stage Schwarzenegger was sorta grasping at straws, the result often being awful and often recycled projects that played with his image and in desperation introduced more and more illogical and ridiculous hooks and sequences.Take Eraser, where the bad guys have heat detecting scopes on their RAY GUNS(!) that go bing-bing-bing and cut through anything in their path, and Arnie gets to kill a 90s style CGI alligator and after consigning it to its fate declares it 'luggage'. (You know what? That bit still makes me laugh.) Arnie plays John Kruger, a guy who doesn't officially exist, whose specialty is making it look like people in need of protection don't exist to keep them safe from various nefarious high-ups and/or low lives. Hence the 'erasing' reference of the title, he erases them from being… mostly without even killing them! This time however the case is a young employee who is a key witness against a Big (evil) Corporation that is illegally making the naughty bing-bing-bing weapons.Eraser actually sports a fairly string cast of mainly James'; Coburn, Caan and Cromwell all get turns at being bad guys or Arnie's superiors… or both. And Vanessa Williams is the damsel in distress in need of the protection only Arnie's big gun could give.The rest of the film is a series of carefully conceived yet palpably ridiculous action setpieces that are technically proficient but lack any sense of true action goodness. The plane escape sequence is fine, the zoo chase scene OK (featuring the afore-mentioned luggage) and the finale at the docks gives Arnie the chance to wield the big guns for himself. Two of them actually. But aside from these moments Eraser marks the point in Arnie's career where the enjoyment was primarily derived from mocking his butchering of the English language. To that point this was merely an added bonus in between the action.I think the scriptwriters spent more time coming up with short dialogue snippets that would sound funnier coming out of Arnie's lips – which is almost everything really – my favourite here was how he managed to turn the 4 syllables of "I work alone" into about 17… I wanted to like Eraser, and as a guilty 2 hour throwaway it served its purpose I guess. But after the 80s and 90s spoiled us (and Arnie) by casting him as super-soldiers, FBI/KGB agents and Terminators it just seems like after a decade of Coke you are forced to switch to Royal Cola for eternity. Sure it's still cola, but… Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Need more evidence that this was the beginning of the end? Arnie's 5 films after Eraser: Jingle all the Way, Batman & Robin, End of Days, The 6th Day and Collateral Damage. I might argue that this was his last vaguely average film if I could summon the energy.