You can't beat acting and dialog like this. A U. S. Marshal has just save the life of a witness who was betrayed by the organization.
"I was stupid."
"You twusted dhem. Dhat's all."
In this outing, Arnold is a lone operator within the Justice Department's Witness Protection Program. His assignment: Prevent the delectable Vanessa Williams from miscreants because she has discovered a high-level plot in her defense-contractor employer to sell super-ray guns to the enemy. As it turns out, there's a lot of money changing hands around here. And, as we all know, money corrupts and absolute money corrupts absolutely. (Okay, that's not exactly what he said.) One of those corrupted is a highly placed colleague in the Witness Protection Program -- James Caan by name.
Well, all of this fol de rol doesn't amount to much more than an excuse for Arnold and Vanessa to run full tilt through cavernous offices and airplanes and secret facilities and docks on which ships are being loaded with those X-ray rifles.
You have rarely seen so much action before. Vanessa is beautiful, resourceful, but vulnerable. Schwarzenegger is simply made of steel. His best stunt is this. An emergency parachute has been thrown from a crippled airplane. Arnold exchanges a few more shots with his enemies. (He rarely misses; they almost always do.) Then he plunges out of the open door to chase the parachute towards earth. Overtaking it in mid-air, he slips into it the way you or I might slip into a windbreaker. The errant airplane, trailing smoke, manages to foul his chute. No matter; he tears it off and opens another chute that we didn't know he had, just soon enough to land with a crash on top of a clunker in an automobile graveyard. Unhurt, of course. Unfazed, even. A second later he's cracking jokes with a couple of black tots.
The most interesting thing about these movies is the kind of villains they come up with. Germans are always a good stand-by. Never forgiven them for World War II. And then Russians are also good. The Cold War. The Mafia also made splendid heavies, but not so much since "The Godfather." Then there were Latino members of "the cartel." Latterly, a few swarthy Arabs have been sneaked in.
But this film transcends such simple-mindedness. Get this, now. Aside from the corrupt individuals in the Justice Department, the heavies are the Mafia okay -- but the Russian Mafia this time! THEY'RE the ones who have paid for the ex-ectoplasmic-X-ray guns and intend to run off with thirty thousand of them. And who are they going to sell them to? The "terrorists." How's that for permutations? Russian Mafia Terrorists. As a matter of fact, Arnold cashes in some IOUs and the Italian Mafia are on OUR side during the shoot out -- mostly for comic effect.
I can't recommend it and I can't NOT recommend it. It's not an affront to God's plan. You've just seen it all before in one or another version. If you like this sort of thing, well, then, you'll like it. It's just more of the same.
"I was stupid."
"You twusted dhem. Dhat's all."
In this outing, Arnold is a lone operator within the Justice Department's Witness Protection Program. His assignment: Prevent the delectable Vanessa Williams from miscreants because she has discovered a high-level plot in her defense-contractor employer to sell super-ray guns to the enemy. As it turns out, there's a lot of money changing hands around here. And, as we all know, money corrupts and absolute money corrupts absolutely. (Okay, that's not exactly what he said.) One of those corrupted is a highly placed colleague in the Witness Protection Program -- James Caan by name.
Well, all of this fol de rol doesn't amount to much more than an excuse for Arnold and Vanessa to run full tilt through cavernous offices and airplanes and secret facilities and docks on which ships are being loaded with those X-ray rifles.
You have rarely seen so much action before. Vanessa is beautiful, resourceful, but vulnerable. Schwarzenegger is simply made of steel. His best stunt is this. An emergency parachute has been thrown from a crippled airplane. Arnold exchanges a few more shots with his enemies. (He rarely misses; they almost always do.) Then he plunges out of the open door to chase the parachute towards earth. Overtaking it in mid-air, he slips into it the way you or I might slip into a windbreaker. The errant airplane, trailing smoke, manages to foul his chute. No matter; he tears it off and opens another chute that we didn't know he had, just soon enough to land with a crash on top of a clunker in an automobile graveyard. Unhurt, of course. Unfazed, even. A second later he's cracking jokes with a couple of black tots.
The most interesting thing about these movies is the kind of villains they come up with. Germans are always a good stand-by. Never forgiven them for World War II. And then Russians are also good. The Cold War. The Mafia also made splendid heavies, but not so much since "The Godfather." Then there were Latino members of "the cartel." Latterly, a few swarthy Arabs have been sneaked in.
But this film transcends such simple-mindedness. Get this, now. Aside from the corrupt individuals in the Justice Department, the heavies are the Mafia okay -- but the Russian Mafia this time! THEY'RE the ones who have paid for the ex-ectoplasmic-X-ray guns and intend to run off with thirty thousand of them. And who are they going to sell them to? The "terrorists." How's that for permutations? Russian Mafia Terrorists. As a matter of fact, Arnold cashes in some IOUs and the Italian Mafia are on OUR side during the shoot out -- mostly for comic effect.
I can't recommend it and I can't NOT recommend it. It's not an affront to God's plan. You've just seen it all before in one or another version. If you like this sort of thing, well, then, you'll like it. It's just more of the same.