Review of Raw Deal (1986) by Elena S — 26 Sep 2012

This movie should actually be getting 1 star, but because of the hilarious and classic lines that Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers in this film, I had to give it two stars. "Raw Deal" is actually the perfect example of what NOT to do with a typical action movie premise. The film is all over the place...and..it's just a bad flick.

The plot is exactly what you would expect. Basically Schwarzenegger plays an ex FBI agent who wants to get back in, but he has to take out a lot of mafia guys in order to do it. He's married, yet there is sort of a love interest with another woman in the movie, and there are a lot of shootouts, and sexual innuendos. That's basically the whole movie. I wasn't expecting anything else, so there was really nothing to complain about.

What was something to complain about was how awkward all of the sequences were. Everything just seemed so weird. Cuts to different scenes were in all the wrong places, and there were some fade to blacks that just shouldn't have been in the movie at all.

And to top it all off, the acting was pretty atrocious. I'm actually not really talking about Arnie believe it or not, because I mean...what else were you gonna get outta the guy in 1986? Anyway, Paul Shenar (The dude from Scarface) was pretty bad, and Robert Davi. It's basically all the 80's guys that you recognize, except all of them just didn't give a shit in this movie, so they all gave half ass performances.

The shootout sequences were pretty entertaining I guess, but at certain points I got pretty bored. The soundtrack was made by some company that does scores for movies that can't find composers...I think. So the score was something awful.

Anyway, there really isn't anything else to say. "Raw Deal" was just simply a bad movie, but for the die hard Arnie fans it is pretty funny to hear some of his one-liners. For everyone else, stay the hell away.