Another Raw Deal for the UK DVD market

Introduction

We all know that Arnie is the quintessential all-action hero. He's never going to win awards for his acting, but on most occasions his films keep us entertained with great action and quotable (yet clunky) dialogue.

1986's Raw Deal is no exception. Sandwiched in Arnie's "career" between Commando "Remember when I said I'd kill you last? I lied..." and Predator "I don't have time to bleed", Raw Deal ticks all the Arnie boxes - preposterous action, terrible acting, unbleievable plot and it screams 1980s from every pixel on the screen (even when there aren't bad suits and shirts and Arnie's slicked back hair on screen). So here's that "plot"...

Mark Kaminsky (Arnie) was kicked out of the FBI for roughing up a suspect. He is asked to leave and ends up a small town sheriff. You just know there'll be some chance of redemption, and it appears in the form of an FBI boss, whose son was been killed on the job by mob boss Patrovita. He asks Kaminsky to go undercover (with that hard to spot Austrian accent) to take down the mob. You can guess the rest.

Before we continue, a couple of Arnie gems from this film.

"Don't drink and bake."

"If you're the best there is, the wheel would have never been invented."

"I hope you're not your mother's only child."

Video

This looks pretty much like the last DVD of this that came out 7 1/2 years ago. A 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer which looks mighty fine for something that's now over 20 years old. No real complaints.

Audio

As with the picture, probably the same as the last one, which means there's still no DD5.1 soundtrack (as available in region 1 - do I still have to keep moaning about these things after all this time?) What you get (DD2.0 stereo) is ok, but Arnie needs the extra channels for his action packed heroics.

Extra Features

To steal a line from Commando, "No chance"...

Ok, there is a pan-and-scan trailer, which shows you how bad the film could have looked, and thankfully it doesn't!

Conclusion

A pure slice of 1980s cheese-filled classic. It's not the greatest film ever made, just a run-of-the-mill revenge action flick, but it's Arnie so disengage your brain and sit back to enjoy some mindless action. There's some bad dialogue, a thrown together in 20 seconds plot and some terrible acting. But it's fun! Just remember that you should switch off after the final shoot-out scene, as the scenes that follow it are boring, cheesey and pointless. Don't say you weren't warned!

A shame that the disc hasn't had a bit of an upgrade since the last time round (in fact it appears to have been stripped of subtitles and other foreign language dubs), but you should still add this to your Arnie action collection, either separately or as part of the newly re-released Arnie box set (also containing Raw Deal, Red Sonja and Total Recall).