well i guess it's that time of the year again . the one time of the year where movie craftors are exonerated from the need to even * try * writing a script that has more dialogue than explosions . it's also the best time for the handful of existing bigtime hollywood mr action heroes to dust off their miniscule vocabularies , pull on their black vests and charge onto our screens tersely expirating what they hope will become memorable catchphrases . in america they call this time " summer " and it happens once every year . and maybe it's the exposure to all that nasty sun that does it , but in the process normally weak , insipid lines like " consider this a divorce , " " hasta la vista , baby , " and " you're the disease . i'm the cure " actually do end up being repeated more often then the phrases from my book of biblical proverbs . this is not entirely a bad thing , of course . what am i talking about ? i'm talking about the summer " blockbusters , " the " action thrillers , " the " this-obviously-cost-a-lot-so-you-know- everyone's-going-to-go " explosions , gas threats , flying saucers , and special effects . in the rash of " my , what big guns you have , but wait ! mine are bigger " movies , there are also the usual boy-meets-fish-and-saves-environment movies ( or whale , whatever ) , and * this * year , the odd crop of " save-the-world-from-aliens-or-environment- threats " offerings . i'm talking about the three batmans , the speeds , the terminators , etc . this year i'm talking about twister , independence day , the arrival , the rock , mission : impossible , and of course , eraser . here in singapore , as our local movie critics like to whine , we seem to get the pick of the crop of " my explosion is more real-looking than yours " movies , but nothing else . mission : impossible opened in our theatres almost as soon as it did in the us . the same goes for eraser , which is unfortunate for arnold schwarzenegger because coming so soon after what time magazine recently called " mission : unavoidable " ( on account of its worldwide mega-advertising blitz ) , eraser seems like a cheaper , less thoughtful imitation . that's saying a lot , because mi the movie was already a cheap , thoughtless imitation of its tv originator of the '60s/'70s . in eraser , arnie is a us federal marshall who relocates trial witnesses whose testimonies place their lives in danger . he does this by destroying all evidence of their present existence and re-situating them with new identities . his new case is lee cullen , played by vanessa williams who , unlike all the other scumbags he's ever relocated , is " an actual , real life honest person . " because she's so good , and has such nice legs , arnold spends the whole movie trying to protect her , and only uses the opening movie sequence to save robert pastorelli from * his * killers . lee obtains evidence that the high-technology weapons company she works for is secretly selling sophisticated , black-market arms to people with foreign accents and stringy hair . of course , as the formula goes , her revealing this information will destroy the system as we know it because heck , there are people in high places who will go down with this , because yes , this is the biggest conspiracy in the history of the world ( that is , america ) since watergate . in protecting lee , arnold is framed by the mentor-turned-evil robert deguerin , nicely played by james caan , and ends up having to prove that he isn't the one killing the programme's witnesses in addition to making sure lee isn't accidentally torpedo-ed to death by the new , green guns his enemies all have . it's around this time that people in the theatre with me starting humming the mission : impossible theme , because arnie's mission includes breaking into a high-security building to run a disk . i guess i should tell you more about the particular gun everyone in this movie is so antsy about . it's an electro-magnetic pulse gun thing which fires aluminium missiles , and which can see through walls . it has some sort of x-ray vision , so its user can target the victim's heart even from great distances . despite this , which i figure is a pretty cool feature in a gun ( though i'm certainly no expert ) , however , arnold , whose own heart is targeted a number of times , * never * goes flying 10 feet backwards with a two-foot missile through his chest like all the others who get shot by this gun . instead he outruns and outsmarts his trackers each time , giving eery and ironic resonance to that terminator line that practically made him famous : " i'll be back . " like everyone else in the theater , i left the movie feeling that the trailers had duped me , because they made me want to watch this movie voluntarily . although there is a * lot * of violence in this movie , not to mention mutilation and some bloody tussles with alligators , i recommend this movie to most over-18s who need some therapeutic mindless action to get over the weirdness of fargo or the hangover effect of leaving las vegas . review's rating system : * wait for the video . * * a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha ! * * * pretty good , bring a friend . * * * * amazing , potent stuff . * * * * * perfection . see it twice .
