Eraser (1996)
February 19, 2024 2:41 PM - Subscribe
A Witness Protection specialist becomes suspicious of his co-workers when dealing with a case involving high-tech weapons.
John "The Eraser" Kruger is the top gun in the US Marshall Witness Protection scheme; he erases their past and deals with their future. His latest assignment is whistle-blower Dr. Lee Cullen, who has evidence against a major arms corporation that's selling weapons to terrorists with the collusion of rogue enemy agents within, but there is danger nearer home for Kruger, from within his own department.
Shiela Reid: Another testosterone film, but this one stars Vanessa Williams as a witness that must be kept safe by Terminator star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a top federal marshal of the Federal Witness Protection Program. In order to survive, Vanessa must sacrifice her life and her identity, and God knows what else. In order to survive, she must first "Be Erased." I know it sounds very predictable, but it's actually better than you expect and Vanessa makes it much more tolerable.
Anne Billson: In another nod to his ?uvre of yore, Arnie's leading lady - Vanessa Williams - is of ethnic descent (albeit with a complexion as pale as Michael Jackson's), as if to demonstrate yet again that Schwarzenegger has no truck with that Aryan superman nonsense. She's stumbled across a conspiracy and now needs protection, but not that sort of protection; Arnold doesn't even snog her.
Eraser can't be bothered with sex, except to pause for a few cheap digs at the occupants of a gay bar, just to show which way it swings. But the film is stuffed with thrusting phallic weaponry: the villains are fixing to provide the Russian mafia with super-duper guns which spit out fluorescent green rounds at the speed of light. The American Mafia, meanwhile, provides patriotic comic relief, and James Caan plays the arch-baddie with admirable nastiness, but the most shocking twist is when we're confronted with a slimeball in a suit played by James Cromwell - Babe's Farmer Hoggett! Gone to the bad!
Nick Prigge: Johnny’s new existence as bartender at a drag club which, I guess, both does and does not feel dated, turning the locale into a truly dumb punchline though at least it puts the locale up there on the screen. In 2023, that scene would have to be cut in all Tennessee theatrical prints. The main identity erasure, however, belongs to Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams), a defense contractor exec who decides to blow the whistle on some sort of secret superweapon that various bad government actors intend to sell on the black market. Williams was apparently chosen for the role at the suggestion of Schwarzenegger’s then-wife Maria Shriver who was not and is not a casting agent and apparently for good reason. Williams is rigid rather than fiery which might have worked around had she not been cast opposite the equally rigid Arnie, meaning they magnify one another’s limitations rather than working together to enhance their strengths, demonstrating no chemistry, romantic or otherwise, together. Schwarzenegger works better in concert with James Caan as Robert DeGuerin, Kruger’s Marshal mentor turned villain, mole inside the Marshal service who is seeking to peddle these superweapons to so many bad guys, two sides of a coin that the old acting pro handles like clockwork while growing increasingly entertaining as his character becomes exasperated by his protégé’s refusal to just die.
The set-up suggests a mid-90s conspiracy thriller, given how many G-men prove to be on the wrong side, but the screenplay by Tony Puryear and Walon Green eschews it, evinced in how Lee becomes less important as the movie goes along, just there to be in trouble, and essentially falling from view altogether during the climax. That climax involves the secret weapon, an electromagnetic rifle, and it’s amusingly revealing how a movie that would ostensibly call out arms manufacturing mostly just manufactures this arm to goose its own action. Maybe that morally rules “Eraser” out of order but as a dumb action movie, I mostly still enjoyed it, not least for how it expertly paces the downtime and derring-do. True, the effects rendering some of that derring-do appear a bit dated, or perhaps just a little unconvincing, but what they lack in verisimilitude, they make up for conception, which is what matters most, Kruger’s parachuting scene combining a mid-air shootout with a jetliner and an exemplar of Chekov’s Zoo, meaning that once a public zoo is mentioned, it’s only a matter of time until the alligator enclosure gets blown to smithereens, yielding Man v Gator. More than that, though, what “Eraser” has going for it is its main man, Schwarzenegger, cutting the image of a movie star simply in the low-angled shot when his character walks into a room to meet Lee. Like her, when you see this shot, you know you’re in good hands. No CGI gator can compare.
Trailer
John "The Eraser" Kruger is the top gun in the US Marshall Witness Protection scheme; he erases their past and deals with their future. His latest assignment is whistle-blower Dr. Lee Cullen, who has evidence against a major arms corporation that's selling weapons to terrorists with the collusion of rogue enemy agents within, but there is danger nearer home for Kruger, from within his own department.
Shiela Reid: Another testosterone film, but this one stars Vanessa Williams as a witness that must be kept safe by Terminator star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a top federal marshal of the Federal Witness Protection Program. In order to survive, Vanessa must sacrifice her life and her identity, and God knows what else. In order to survive, she must first "Be Erased." I know it sounds very predictable, but it's actually better than you expect and Vanessa makes it much more tolerable.
Anne Billson: In another nod to his ?uvre of yore, Arnie's leading lady - Vanessa Williams - is of ethnic descent (albeit with a complexion as pale as Michael Jackson's), as if to demonstrate yet again that Schwarzenegger has no truck with that Aryan superman nonsense. She's stumbled across a conspiracy and now needs protection, but not that sort of protection; Arnold doesn't even snog her.
Eraser can't be bothered with sex, except to pause for a few cheap digs at the occupants of a gay bar, just to show which way it swings. But the film is stuffed with thrusting phallic weaponry: the villains are fixing to provide the Russian mafia with super-duper guns which spit out fluorescent green rounds at the speed of light. The American Mafia, meanwhile, provides patriotic comic relief, and James Caan plays the arch-baddie with admirable nastiness, but the most shocking twist is when we're confronted with a slimeball in a suit played by James Cromwell - Babe's Farmer Hoggett! Gone to the bad!
Nick Prigge: Johnny’s new existence as bartender at a drag club which, I guess, both does and does not feel dated, turning the locale into a truly dumb punchline though at least it puts the locale up there on the screen. In 2023, that scene would have to be cut in all Tennessee theatrical prints. The main identity erasure, however, belongs to Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams), a defense contractor exec who decides to blow the whistle on some sort of secret superweapon that various bad government actors intend to sell on the black market. Williams was apparently chosen for the role at the suggestion of Schwarzenegger’s then-wife Maria Shriver who was not and is not a casting agent and apparently for good reason. Williams is rigid rather than fiery which might have worked around had she not been cast opposite the equally rigid Arnie, meaning they magnify one another’s limitations rather than working together to enhance their strengths, demonstrating no chemistry, romantic or otherwise, together. Schwarzenegger works better in concert with James Caan as Robert DeGuerin, Kruger’s Marshal mentor turned villain, mole inside the Marshal service who is seeking to peddle these superweapons to so many bad guys, two sides of a coin that the old acting pro handles like clockwork while growing increasingly entertaining as his character becomes exasperated by his protégé’s refusal to just die.
The set-up suggests a mid-90s conspiracy thriller, given how many G-men prove to be on the wrong side, but the screenplay by Tony Puryear and Walon Green eschews it, evinced in how Lee becomes less important as the movie goes along, just there to be in trouble, and essentially falling from view altogether during the climax. That climax involves the secret weapon, an electromagnetic rifle, and it’s amusingly revealing how a movie that would ostensibly call out arms manufacturing mostly just manufactures this arm to goose its own action. Maybe that morally rules “Eraser” out of order but as a dumb action movie, I mostly still enjoyed it, not least for how it expertly paces the downtime and derring-do. True, the effects rendering some of that derring-do appear a bit dated, or perhaps just a little unconvincing, but what they lack in verisimilitude, they make up for conception, which is what matters most, Kruger’s parachuting scene combining a mid-air shootout with a jetliner and an exemplar of Chekov’s Zoo, meaning that once a public zoo is mentioned, it’s only a matter of time until the alligator enclosure gets blown to smithereens, yielding Man v Gator. More than that, though, what “Eraser” has going for it is its main man, Schwarzenegger, cutting the image of a movie star simply in the low-angled shot when his character walks into a room to meet Lee. Like her, when you see this shot, you know you’re in good hands. No CGI gator can compare.
Trailer
I saw this one in the theater. I don't remember much of it, just Arnold saying "ERASED" a lot, and the cool X-ray vision railgun.
posted by jordemort at 9:46 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]
posted by jordemort at 9:46 PM on February 19 [1 favorite]
Though I have seen this movie no less than three, maybe four times, each time I have fallen asleep roughly half-way through. In the film's defence I was gratuitously intoxicated for at least three of those viewings and one I started watching way, way too late.
The rail-gun, though, is still stuck in my mind - the weird, green wiggly bullets which later some video game replicated, intentionally or not. Nothing else - just the green worms and periodically a sense of urgency.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:52 AM on February 20
The rail-gun, though, is still stuck in my mind - the weird, green wiggly bullets which later some video game replicated, intentionally or not. Nothing else - just the green worms and periodically a sense of urgency.
posted by From Bklyn at 9:52 AM on February 20
the most shocking twist is when we're confronted with a slimeball in a suit played by James Cromwell - Babe's Farmer Hoggett! Gone to the bad!
Rollo Tomassi
posted by kirkaracha at 12:20 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
Rollo Tomassi
posted by kirkaracha at 12:20 PM on February 20 [3 favorites]
it’s only a matter of time until the alligator enclosure gets blown to smithereens, yielding Man v Gator
"You're luggage."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:21 PM on February 20
"You're luggage."
posted by kirkaracha at 12:21 PM on February 20
the weird, green wiggly bullets which later some video game replicated,
I don’t specifically recall wiggly green bullets, but Perfect Dark had a similar see-and-shoot-through-walls device. It made multiplayer delightful as you or your opponent would catch a peripheral view of one’s own silhouette skulking along in someone else’s view. “Wait, is that m—”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:47 PM on February 20
I don’t specifically recall wiggly green bullets, but Perfect Dark had a similar see-and-shoot-through-walls device. It made multiplayer delightful as you or your opponent would catch a peripheral view of one’s own silhouette skulking along in someone else’s view. “Wait, is that m—”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:47 PM on February 20
the weird, green wiggly bullets which later some video game replicated, intentionally or not
Quake 2 had one, and it was intentional according to Tim Willits here.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 1:37 PM on February 22
Quake 2 had one, and it was intentional according to Tim Willits here.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 1:37 PM on February 22
They buried the lede. The movie should have been called Awesome Xray Railgun
posted by whuppy at 11:31 AM on February 29
posted by whuppy at 11:31 AM on February 29
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posted by Carillon at 2:42 PM on February 19 [2 favorites]