High Calibre Entertainment

“His trigger has all the answers.” It’s one of the all time great action movie taglines, courtesy the 1986 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Raw Deal. So simple, so true, so ‘80s. During the Reagan era there were seemingly few problems that couldn’t be solved by bigger or more firepower, and at the movies no man was better armed (in more than one sense of the word – the guy had pipes like mountain ranges) than Arnie. Raw Deal may be his shootin’-est film ever.

OK, given that it’s the 25^th anniversary of the Terminator, and that Terminator: Salvation opens this weekend, the obvious choice would be to write about that franchise. However, given the dismal reviews of the film (at the time of this writing, it’s at a lousy 35% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), that it isn’t a Schwarzenegger film and, well, really, that I picked up Raw Deal on DVD at HMV for six bucks, I’d like to revisit this particular testosterone-fuelled morality tale first. Arnold

stars as Mark Kaminsky, a former F.B.I. agent who was screwed over by the bureau and now works as a small town sheriff. His wife hates it in the boonies and has turned to drinking, and he’s… well, at least he’s got a jeep. Kaminsky gets his chance to regain his old life when the son of a former colleague (played by Darren McGavin – from the ‘70s Night Stalker series!) is killed while trying to protect a witness who was going to testify against the Chicago mob. Slopping roughly half a litre of Brylcreem on his head and donning an expensive suit, Kaminsky goes undercover (unbeknownst to anyone but the man who hired him) as “Joseph P. Brenner” to take down the organized crime gang, avenge the death of his friend’s son and expose the leak that caused his death. Along the way he’s aided by a gambling addicted gangster’s moll, who falls for him. And, in true ‘80s fashion, it stars character actor Robert Davi (he’s one of those guys who has played the heavy in scores of action flicks) as a ruthless mobster.

What most people don’t know about the film is that it was co-written by Norman Wexler, who penned Saturday Night Fever and its sequel Stayin’ Alive, and Italian screenwriters Luciano Vincenzoni Luciano and Sergio Donati, whose combined writer credits include some legendary spaghetti westerns, including For a Few Dollars More, A Fistful of Dynamite, Death Rides a Horse, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The latter screenwriting credits explains both why the film feels like a gritty western, with its bloody shoot-outs and renegade ultra-masculine protagonist, and more than a little misogynist (or maybe it’s just that it’s an ‘80s action movie…).

Back in the day I had a weight room in the basement of our family home. I covered the walls with cheap Arnie posters I’d find at the mall. There were ones for Conan, Commando, The Terminator, Total Recall and my favourite: Raw Deal. So why did I like that one the most?

Maybe because it was the grittiest, least fantasy-based one… or maybe the slicked back hair, the cigar and the gun just made him seem like the ultimate tough guy, and being “tough” is not an unusual aspiration for a teenage boy.

The scene that epitomizes Raw Deal, and the only one I really remembered before watching the film again, is the part when Arnold’s driving around a quarry in a convertible, chomping on a cigar and making impossible shots where he’s picking off thugs standing atop rock piles – all while listening to “Satisfaction” by the Stones. It’s definitely one for the Arnold Schwarzenegger Glorification of Violence Highlight Reel.

Watching that scene again, I wondered, “What if those ‘thugs’ were just regular guys with families hired as security at the quarry?” What if, that morning, they said goodbye to their families and went off their jobs making sure no one tried to steal any rocks? Then all of a sudden some muscle-bound psycho in a Caddy comes tearing through the place, shooting it up. Maybe those guys were just doing their jobs, and now their wives are widows and their kids are going to have to grow up without fathers! It’s not fair.

Screw that! This is an ‘80s action movie, if the hero wasted those guys, they totally had it coming. They probably group-mugged an old lady on the way to work and threw her walker in front of a steamroller. That’s the thing about this type of film: there are few moral grey areas, which makes them both stupid and enjoyably easy to digest.

Raw Deal may not have killer cyborgs from the future, sword-wielding barbarians or a stolen identity conspiracy unfolding on Mars, but it does have the moral fantasy of a simple world where clearly good men carry out justice against clearly bad men – using plenty of bullets. Of course this isn’t a reasonable world view in real life, but if I wanted questions that could be answered without a trigger, I’d watch Jeopardy, not Raw Deal.

For six bucks, the Raw Deal DVD is a great deal (even though it doesn’t have any extras).

Can I have Bad Guys That Need Shooting for a thousand, Arnold?

 

-Dave Alexander