Review of Raw Deal

Introduction

Once an FBI agent, now a small town sheriff, Mark Kaminsky played by Arnold Schwarzenegger is offered a second chance again with a promise of reinstatement into the bureau by FBI chief Harry Shannon during a private conversation. Harry tells Mark about the death of his son who was brutally killed while in witness protection by a mobster named Patrovina and that he would stop at nothing in this personal vendetta, and states that only he could pull it off. Mark is to go undercover and infiltrate the mobster’s gang and become a part of it before wiping the killer out as a revenge for Harry in order to get his FBI position again.

Video

The DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 and is a very clean and clear transfer with bold colours and dark blacks. The skin tones of the characters are realistic and look healthy in this clear print, the featured night shot scenes are also very clear and although well lit so that detail can be seen, do not affect the bold black colours of night in any way, for example greying them out. There was no sign of grain or dropouts of any type throughout which was surprising considering the age of this ‘actioner’.
The first couple of scenes include sun shining over trees and gravely roads but there are other locations of interest during the course of the movie, the quarry was a nice idea as Kaminsky drives through and has to battle against dumper trucks and excavators which loom around him as well as shooters from high up on cranes and equipment. A few glimpses of city shots in daytime look bright and the background buildings are hazed out slightly to represent distance, the movie has a pretty good balance of exterior and interior shots the indoor ones comprising of apartments, offices, casinos and shops all which look adequate for the scene.
There was an impressive car chase sequence included that has a car slaloming around stone pillars and coming pretty close for comfort! The action heats up even more at the climax of the movie as Kaminsky loads up his guns and goes all out on getting past Patrovina’s men in order to get him, a well shot shootout. There were some brilliant close ups on gunshots and gun wounds, some looking pretty realistic on the ‘gory’ factor, it was scenes like this that makes the movie look very uncut indeed, (I hope so).

Audio

The audio mix is in Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 and unfortunately isn’t utilised to the fullest this movie could offer. There is some distinctive front channel activity between the left and right on some scenes and ambient effects like cars driving by and night insects can be heard too. The gun effects sound ‘beefy’ enough and realistic especially with the bigger barrelled weapons, the fight scenes had ‘hard’ and realistic sounds to them instead of the ‘slappy’, ‘high-sounding’ effects you get in some other movies.
I noticed that the dialogue is clear, but only on higher volume levels probably due to the audio mix and the pseudo centre channel created (according to the DVD player diagram), it could do with a tinkering before the movie commences. The main theme to this movie is a mixture of electric guitar, strings and a similarity to the eighties TV series ‘Street Hawk’, it has different variations throughout but keeps the same sort of beat and pace and suites the scenes well. There is some vocal style songs put in the movie, the opening credits has a country type of tune, and Arnold also has one playing off his cassette whilst he drives around the quarry.

Features

The first screen gives a choice of four languages, situated on a black and white static movie scene. The main menu has a slow beating tune that is the movies main theme, two red borders top and bottom with available options given. An animated title runs from right to left in the middle with a collection of moving imagery within taken from the movie. The DVD only features a trailer for it’s features the rest is standard issue.

Conclusion

It was movies like this that showed Arnold in his prime and proved he could be an action hero of some description. His ‘wise guy’ attitude to Patrovina and the gang members he has bonded with was quite comical and gave me a few smirks, the action scenes either in the car chase, fights or the shootouts were well shot and did have realism to them this is what made them good I reckon. I actually couldn’t remember what this movie was about before I started it and found myself thinking that he was Russian in this role, (probably getting mixed up with Red Heat) I found that although he never did get a wound I quite enjoyed this one and it was nice to bring back those eighties memories once again.