Mr. S. is quite recognizable, as usual, as the lone operator who is legendary at his job. Brief little dialog, and HEY he's learned to smile! The plot line is familiar, a witness has agreed to sting a large defense corp she is working for, and Mr. S. has to keep her alive until the trial.
Conspiracy Alert! Conspiracy Alert! Almost reminescent of Mission Impossible, out this year too, we start getting the big hint that someone high up smells. Then the film hits us with it big time. By 1/3 of the way into it, we know who all the bad guys are, and the one guy who could really make the conspiracy complete is the same loveable face Sly Stallone had been trained by in Judge Dredd. Hard to mistrust this guys face, and our hero certainly doesn't seem to think for a minute his old mentor would do him wrong. Hell this guy ...a hero if you ever saw one, Max Von Sydow, was even a hero in Dino Laurentio's classic Dune (the doctor of change, Dr. Liet Kynes).
Moving beyond that, the film has the complete set of effects...lots of explosions, shoot-em-up scenes we expect from an "Arnold" film. And the sci-fi?
The film plot is centered around the evidence that the company is going to be shipping marvelous new "Electromagnetic pulse guns". A ray gun of incredible force that shoots a focused EM pulse about every half second that will blow up a car or kill man while knocking him back 50 feet. Oh and the sighting is kind of cool, a low light, xray like beam that sees through walls and our heros to. Guy can actually see the heart he is shooting at! They eventually get around to telling us they are called "rail guns", the EM pulse actually sending a aluminum piece at "near the speed of light". Holy shit bat man!
And just as in last year's "True Lies", Arnold's sidekick is here to add some comedy. Okay, okay, Arnold is working alone, but he winds up needing help, and he turns to one of his witnesses he has helped change identifies. In this film the sidekick can be recognizable as Murphy Brown's painter friend (wasn't it Elvin?). If you can make the transition, he is now working in a gay bar, "Please don't tell anyone I'm straight, it will break lots of hearts". And his real identity is the cousin of "Two Steps Tony", a hood who runs the docks in Baltimore. This comes in handy when the good guys need to stop the bad guys from shipping the EM weapons out of the country.
All in all, the film runs fast, takes a few short breaths and reasonable points, then runs on again. Our lady friend is eclipsed and only shows up in brief images of emotional facial shots as the bad guys are doing it to her again.
And Arnold forgive, but we must...Arnold would say, "Hey only three innocents get killed in this film...so no gratuitous killing. And anyway its just this one evil guy!" So we guess the mayhem is kept to a "minimum", and really we didn't see too much blood and gore, certainly less than say The Godfather in all its various sequels. Exciting to watch, even if a bit predictable, but so what that's what action films have become! We enjoyed!
Not a classic to be, but certainly will go in our action film library, and the idea of the EM gun convinces us it belongs in the borderline sci-fi genre.