Eraser

U. S Marshal John Kruger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) specialises in faking people's deaths and erasing their identity so they can live freely from their persecutors. He protects a witness in a plot within Cyrez Corporation to ship elaborate laser weapons to foreign countries to aid their causes and compromise the safety of America. The employee and witness from within named Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams) attempts to expose the weapons manufacturers, dealers and former friend of Kruger/defected U. S Marshal Robert Deguerin (James Caan) by downloading the company information on to her disc to testify against them in court which immediately causes an impact by leading a senior manager to commit suicide.

Kruger relocates Cullen to keep her out of harm's way as he looks for proof to convict corrupt CEO William Donahue and Deguerin of treason while keeping the weapons out of foreign hands.

The film isn't a complete train-wreck though it suffers from bad plotting. The acting is passable, Arnold is simply Arnold and Williams does okay with the generic role she has. Caan is pretty good as the treacherous Deguerin and wisely opts not to play his role in an over-the-top bad guy way.

The action, though regular and engaging, is often too ridiculous to suspend belief. The parachute fall out of a plane was a serious rolls eye moment for me. Bad CGI tried to make me believe it was possible for Kruger to free-fall from the plane, catch and open his parachute, avoid the returning plane and untangle himself while free-falling yet again to crash land on a car.

A shoot-out in a zoo provided us with CGI alligators. They were quite clumsy looking but I have seen worse in recent films.

The climax featured a massive shoot-out with these special laser weapons on a shipping yard where these weapons were being exported. It featured lots of explosions and, despite Kruger's high mortality rate as he received lots of physical punishment during the course of the film, Kruger seems to be fairly unphased by his gaping wounds and they don't play a major part in the film's continuity.

The conclusion seemed to detract from the plot so much that it pretty much negated the whole point of the film. Kruger and Cullen spent the entire time protecting the disc Cullen risked her life to get and testify against Degeurin and Donahue in court. In the end, Kruger simply fakes his and Cullen's death to distract the baddies on to a tram line to meet an unfortunate end.

So why place so much emphasis on a disc as evidence to testify against Donahue and Degeurin in court if Kruger was simply going to 'erase' their lives in the end anyway? What was the point in Kruger saving Degeurin at the end of their battle only to kill him off in the final scene?

Oh well...Lol.

One of my favourite Arnie flicks ruined by cut scenes, one in particular is the scene when james caan's character kills the woman he's supposed to be protecting, a lot of language has also been cut out of the film too, most notably james cromwell's scene, if you really want to watch this film do yourself a favour and get hold of the uncut version, cutting scenes is one thing, but when scenes are cut during major plot points, it makes for a very disapointing viewing and possibly confusing for a first time viewing