Raw Deal

A former FBI agent (Arnold Schwarzenegger) goes undercover to infiltrate Chicago’s underworld.

Raw Deal isn’t a very good movie, but it never pretends to be. It’s a poorly scripted and stiffly acted and yet, it’s still pretty entertaining. What else can you say about a film that features Arnold Schwarzenegger speeding around a rock quarry shooting mobsters through the kicked-out windshield of his car?

Featuring one-liner’s like “You should not drink and bake,” the script isn’t exactly snappy. The early scenes at home between Arnold and his wife (from which the above line is lifted) are the low point, with dialog so stilted you’d swear the performers were reading it from cue-cards, but thankfully, the wife disappears pretty quick and things start to gain momentum, building to the classic action movie climax where Arnold, armed with a ridiculous amount of firepower, takes out the entire Chicago mob.

Believable? No. Fun? You bet.

Ultimately though, Raw Deal doesn’t manage the sheer over-the-top cartoonish glee of Schwarzenegger’s previous film, Commando, and thus isn’t really worth seeking out, save by those who are big fans of either the star or the genre.