Undercooked and Poorly Delivered

It is interesting going back to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early films to see just how the Governator built his career. Certainly a couple of key successes propelled him into the stratosphere. As we’ve noted, both the Conan the Barbarian films along with the first The Terminator helped to cement him as a certain kind of icon, but neither of those films were “blow the doors off” hits. He was moderately successful at the Box Office, turning out movies that were reasonably expected to turn a profit, they’d come out and make their money back with a little extra, but they weren’t anything that would classify him as A-list. That didn’t come until the end of the 1980s when he played against type in the buddy comedy Twins, and suddenly he wasn’t just making $50 to $90 Mil a movie, but $200 Mil-plus.

But that journey took nearly two decades, from his earliest role as the titular demi-god in Hercules in New York in 1970 (when he was just 23). There was a lot of fodder, and a ton of junky 1980s action movies, in the middle before one could say that Schwarzenegger truly broke through into the A-list and could start really directing his career his way, and some of that crap pumped in between it all is pretty hard to watch.

Case in point: Raw Deal, a film that seems to think Schwarzenegger can pass as an undercover cop in a world of Italian mobsters. To say the hulking, slab of Austrian meatloaf was miscast in this film is an understatement. The film simply doesn’t know what to do with Schwarzenegger, his abilities, or his specific (albeit limited) charms as an actor. But then, Raw Deal doesn’t really know what to do as a movie in general, lacking a decent script or good direction as well. This would have been an absolute disaster of a film no matter who starred in it, and the only reason it’s remembered now is because one of the (soon to be) biggest names in action in the 1980s and 1990s starred in it.

Schwarzenegger plays Sheriff Mark Kaminski, a former FBI agent who left the bureau in disgrace after getting maybe a little too rough with some suspects (actions the film seems to think are just fine, really). That penchant for going a bit too far, though, comes in handy when his former boss, Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin), calls up needing a big, big favor. Harry’s son had just been killed in the line of duty by enforcers sent by notorious mob boss Lou Patrovita (Sam Wanamaker) and Harry wants revenge.

To that end, Mark fakes his own death and heads to the city where he poses as Joseph P. Brenner, a low-level criminal with aspirations to join a “family” and move up the ranks. He gets in with Lou's right hand man, Martin "The Hammer" Lamanski (Steven Hill) and starts running jobs with the Hammer’s enforcer, Max Keller (Robert Davi). But Max doesn’t trust Joey, and begins digging into Joey’s past to see just who he really was. Mark / Joey has to be careful because he’s running an sanctioned op and if anyone, cops or mobsters, catch him out it’ll be curtains for Joey Brenner.

Part of the issue with the film is that Schwarzenegger is just not great in the role. Early on in the film, when (as the sheriff) he’s chasing a bad guy, the film kind of works. I had flashbacks (flash-forwards?) to The Last Stand, with Schwarzenegger’s retired cop working as a sheriff in a small town. I thought that was where the film was going to go and I was fine with that because, while silly to this this giant hulk would work as a small town cop, at least it could play up the fish-out-of-water irony. But that’s not what the film wanted to do. It wanted to put Schwarzenegger’s character not only in a world, the Italian Mob, where Schwarzenegger didn’t look the part, it also wanted him to blend in.

The film isn’t smart enough to handle this stupid idea well. Schwarzenegger doesn’t blend, he dominates the room. That’s what Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator understood; he is his own special effect, but if you put him in a film where it never acknowledges his size or ferocity then he’s wasted. Raw DeaI wants to treat Schwarzenegger’s character as just another mob enforcer, a goon like any other that is working his way up the ranks, and it never has him do any physical jobs that would seemingly be perfect for a man this size. It feels like the film was written for just a random actor and, for some reason, Schwarzenegger got the gig instead.

Instead of trying to make him blend in, the film should have had him stand out. When he got a meeting with the Hammer, the film should have had the mob boss say, “yeah, I could see you handling yourself. You look like you rip guys apart.” When he meets Lou, the head of the organization, Lou would have no reason to ask, “you ever kill a man?” because, look at him. That should be self-evident. But the film never acknowledges this, it never thinks about who is in the lead role and the ramifications for what that would mean. Really, Raw Deal never thinks at all.

It doesn’t help matters that the film barely gives any consideration to the mob guys. We have this whole organization, from Lou to the Hammer to Max, but none of them really come into focus as characters. Max comes the closest as he has a plotline about being jealous of Joey since Joey gets with Max’s former lover, Monique (Kathryn Harrold), and this fuels him to look more closely into Joey’s life. Well, okay, I assume that was the plan. The film never actually says this, and Max’s interactions with Joey are pretty limited. Much of what we glean from Max isn’t even in the subtext of the film and it only comes across because Robert Davi is a decent actor and he tries to elevate his character. The script, basic as it is, doesn’t give anyone much to do at all.

There’s even a twist in the film about how a supposed good guy is actually a bad guy. This should be a big deal, a huge twist that recontextualizes everything we know about the story. And it would be, if we cared at all about the story or if it felt like there was anything of real substance to the film. But we don’t care about any of the characters in Raw Deal, nor do we give a crap about what happens to them, Schwarzenegger’s Mark / Joey included. The characters are just vessels to get the plot to its inevitable ending, and the plot is simply there to get us to one big moment of wanton violence at the climax.

It’s not even good violence. Director John Irvin did not have an eye for this kind of action, and so the film has to do a lot to cover for bad action direction and cinematography. The final gunfight (which is the only real big action set piece in the film) is choppy and hard to watch. It has a lot of cuts from Arnold shooting towards the camera, and then people falling over bloody and dead, but by and large there’s a disconnect to everything going on. It feels stilted and weird, very much like we’re watching a reconstruction of action and not stuff that’s happening in the moment. It’s never propulsive, lacking any kind of fun or charm. It’s just bad.

And that’s really Raw Deal in a nutshell: it’s just bad. It’s a lightweight, hollow, empty film with a lead actor that should have been in anything else instead. Plenty of films know what to do with Schwarzenegger and can use his strength and bulk as an accent to the film. Raw Deal puts Schwarzenegger into a role he’s not suited for and then never comments on it at all. It’s too stupid to be fun, and too simple to be able to work with (or around) it’s hulking lead.