EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Leofwine_draca A super-slick slice of action, starring the reliable Arnie. This fast-paced flick has a lot bigger budget than Arnie's '80s offerings but it's not quite as enjoyable, despite an eye-popping array of visual effects and non-stop action sequences. There's a clinical detachment to this film, mainly due to the 'seen it all before' feel, as nothing really proves memorable or fresh.However there are lots of reasons to watch. Arnie may look a little old these days but he's still as tough as ever, even more so than before as he has his hands and legs impaled by flying shrapnel (great scenes) and rips them out. Lots of baddies are killed and shot by Schwarzenegger, and it's great to see him return to a solid action role after the rather nauseating comedies like JUNIOR and JINGLE ALL THE WAY. Vanessa Williams is the female lead and remains competent, but being female she isn't really given much to do. James Caan enjoys himself in an over-the-top role as a sneering villain, much like Michael Caine in ON DEADLY GROUND. He makes a good adversary.The special effects are all outstanding in this film, the super guns being most memorable as they leave plasma rings in the air after a bullet (an effect used more extensively in THE MATRIX). There are also a number of outrageous stunts and action sequences, set pieces including Arnie jumping out of a plane to get his parachute and a fight in a zoo, where crocodiles eat a number of bad guys in a hilarious moment: just a shame about the extremely dodgy nature of the CGI effects. The BBFC outrageously cut close to four minutes of the violence on this film's UK release, and it's definitely worth tracking down the uncut version. The violence in this is pleasingly hard-hitting and old school, as Schwarzenegger doesn't shy away from taking out the bad guys – and some good guys too, if need be.

Comeuppance Reviews 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 Grand Master Eraser was Arnold Schwarzenegger's last decent movie before his string of box office flops including Batman and Robin (1997), End of Days (1999), The Sixth Day (2000), and Collateral Damage (2002). Despite several flaws here and there as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger at his corny best dispensing his vintage one liners as well as the bad guys, Eraser is still an entertaining action movie.Arnold Schwarzenegger is U.S. Marshall John Kruger, also known as the Eraser. John Kruger is responsible for erasing the lives of witnesses that are a part of the Witness Protection Program by faking their deaths and giving them new identities. He is assigned to protect Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams) after she agrees to retrieve information from Cyrez Corporation, who is also responsible for shady illegal arms deals, including the sale of an electromagnetic pulse rifle also known as the rail gun. John Kruger must keep Lee Cullen safe as well as uncovering a further conspiracy that involves high ranking members of the government, as well as his boss and mentor fellow U.S. Marshall Robert DeGuerin (James Cann).Also featured in the cast is James Coburn as WitSec Chief Beller who turns out to be Kruger's only ally, James Cromwell as the crooked Cyrez boss William Donahue, and Robert Pastorelli as a fellow witness Kruger erases Johnny Casteleone.Director Charles Russell (The Blob, The Mask) was a surprise choice as the director given that he had just directed the smash hit comedy The Mask (1994) with Jim Carrey. Charles Russell keeps the movie enjoyable with comic book action.Eraser used to be one of my favourite movies when I was 13 years old, however as time has gone on Eraser is not as a huge movie as it used to be. Unfortunately there are plot holes aplenty and Arnold Schwarzenegger's corny humour seems forced, but is certainly an enjoyable action movie that can pass the time.7/10.

oneguyrambling 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.