NateWatchesCoolMovies Eraser is a top notch Schwarzenegger vehicle, and in a year where the only other Arnie entry was the mind numbing Jingle All The Way, it supplies 1996 with that jolt of action from our favourite Austrian juggernaut. Here he's John Kruger, a US Marshal who specializes in an obscure wing of the witness protection program that literally wipes people's memories clean before replacement. The technology is naturally hoarded over by big old corporations which as we know aren't to be trusted in these type of films. During a routine mission to help beautiful client Vanessa Williams, Kruger begins to suspect his own colleagues of some shady shit involving the sale of high grade weapons, and before he knows it he in the crosshairs and on the run with Vanessa tagging along. It's all smarmy James Caan's fault really, who plays his devilish, treacherous superior officer at the WitSec agency, a classic case of ambition gone rogue, his villainous cackle trademark of someone you just shouldn't trust, even before his true colours are bared. The action is fast, furious and rooted in 90's sensibilities, with all manner of attack helicopter chases, massive artillery fired off at a whim and the the near SciFi concept frequently smothered by the shock and awe campaign of each set piece, which is fine in an Arnie flick really, I mean they can't all be Terminators and Total Recalls. There's a neat rogues gallery of character actors filling in the wings in addition to the big guy, Williams and Caan, including Olek Krupa, Patrick Kilpatrick, James Cromwell, Danny Nucci, Robert Pastorelli, Joe Viterelli, Mark Rolston, John Slattery, Roma Maffia, Tony Longo, Melora Walters, Camryn Mannheim, Skip Sudduth and Nick Chinlund as Caan's unwitting henchman. There's also a delightful cameo from James Coburn as the WitSet CEO, doing the same pleasant 'sort of a villain, but also sort of not' shtick he did in Payback. One of Arnie's more low key efforts, but still more than serviceable and a slam bang damn great time at the action races.

leplatypus Usually i don't watch Schwarzy movies because it's dumb (but well done) action-violence flicks punctuated by his funny (silly) lines, except if the story is particularly original (like terminator, true lies).... Here, it's not the case as i understand that his (really simple) job is to give new papers and address to protected witness! Beyond, i don't understand anything and especially why dealing arms with a senator leads to such erasing!! Honestly i picked this movie for his witness, the cute Vanessa Williams. Caan is also good as the usual bastard and i'm amazed by such technology! My reaction to this high-tech is to know if it's real or not: in France, for example, in no way, our administration is as advanced as what is shown in the movie! At the end, it's not all bad but taken as a whole, it's however a bit boring for me, particularly flawed by a complicated story!

SnoopyStyle US Marshal John Kruger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an expert at erasing identities at WITSEC. Chief Beller (James Coburn) assigns Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams) to him. She's a whistle-blower at defense contractor Cyrez Corporation. After getting the evidence for the government, she is resistant to WITSEC and killers come after her with high-tech weapons. Fellow Marshal Robert DeGuerin (James Caan) tells Kruger that someone is killing witnesses.It's a nice action thriller. There are lots of gun action. The body count is pretty good. Arnold gets to hang out of a plane and battle some crocodiles. It probably needs a few more wisecracks to be as fun as some of Arnold's best. The one-liners aren't quite as good. I like it but people may be tired of his big action movies by that point.

oneguyrambling Arnie's career was really losing steam by the time Eraser came around. After all he'd played every role that suited him, often multiple times. The robot. The soldier. The cop. The special agent. The ummm… barbarian.And believe it or not, as IMDb is my witness, he played ALL of those characters more than once by this time, the only difference sometimes being the Eastern European country he was supposed to have come from.So by this stage Schwarzenegger was sorta grasping at straws, the result often being awful and often recycled projects that played with his image and in desperation introduced more and more illogical and ridiculous hooks and sequences.Take Eraser, where the bad guys have heat detecting scopes on their RAY GUNS(!) that go bing-bing-bing and cut through anything in their path, and Arnie gets to kill a 90s style CGI alligator and after consigning it to its fate declares it 'luggage'. (You know what? That bit still makes me laugh.) Arnie plays John Kruger, a guy who doesn't officially exist, whose specialty is making it look like people in need of protection don't exist to keep them safe from various nefarious high-ups and/or low lives. Hence the 'erasing' reference of the title, he erases them from being… mostly without even killing them! This time however the case is a young employee who is a key witness against a Big (evil) Corporation that is illegally making the naughty bing-bing-bing weapons.Eraser actually sports a fairly string cast of mainly James'; Coburn, Caan and Cromwell all get turns at being bad guys or Arnie's superiors… or both. And Vanessa Williams is the damsel in distress in need of the protection only Arnie's big gun could give.The rest of the film is a series of carefully conceived yet palpably ridiculous action setpieces that are technically proficient but lack any sense of true action goodness. The plane escape sequence is fine, the zoo chase scene OK (featuring the afore-mentioned luggage) and the finale at the docks gives Arnie the chance to wield the big guns for himself. Two of them actually. But aside from these moments Eraser marks the point in Arnie's career where the enjoyment was primarily derived from mocking his butchering of the English language. To that point this was merely an added bonus in between the action.I think the scriptwriters spent more time coming up with short dialogue snippets that would sound funnier coming out of Arnie's lips – which is almost everything really – my favourite here was how he managed to turn the 4 syllables of "I work alone" into about 17… I wanted to like Eraser, and as a guilty 2 hour throwaway it served its purpose I guess. But after the 80s and 90s spoiled us (and Arnie) by casting him as super-soldiers, FBI/KGB agents and Terminators it just seems like after a decade of Coke you are forced to switch to Royal Cola for eternity. Sure it's still cola, but… Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Need more evidence that this was the beginning of the end? Arnie's 5 films after Eraser: Jingle all the Way, Batman & Robin, End of Days, The 6th Day and Collateral Damage. I might argue that this was his last vaguely average film if I could summon the energy.