4 Star

Action Packed Arnie.

With a career that started with writing the screenplay and directing A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Chuck Russell went onto direct Hollywood blockbusters such as The Mask and The Scorpion King, and now Warner Bros’ Eraser is on 4K UHD. The action is stunning in this excellent restoration, a must own for the action fan in your house. One for the Christmas stocking.

Johnny C (Robert Pastorelli, Beverly Hills Cop II, Dances with Wolves) has upset his mob boss Mr Canelli, so he has been in hiding with the aid of Wit Sec (Witness Protection), but he doesn’t like the local cuisine, so he visits one of his favourite haunts. However, he was spotted and followed, now he has Mr Canelli’s goons doing him over and they are going to make sure he can never testify against his old boss.

A masked man (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Red Heat, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Red Sonja, Total Recall) enters the house, after he has taken out the guy on watch. He is quick and deadly, and soon he is telling Johnny and his wife to play dead, as he covers them in fake blood, then takes their photo’s, before releasing them and swapping them for two bodies he has taken from the morgue. With a quick phone call to the police, he douses the house in petrol then sets the house ablaze while they make their escape as the police arrive. Johnny C and his wife are eternally grateful.

Next time you’re dead, this only happens once.

Meanwhile in New York, senior executive at Cyrez Corporation Lee Culen (Vanessa Williams, Ugly Betty (TV Series), Desperate Housewives (TV Series)) is facing the hardest day of her life, as she went to the FBI about an accounting error at her company. Now she is wearing a hidden camera and a wire, and she is going to acquire the evidence the FBI need to prosecute the company that makes top secret weapons for the government. Like the Hypervelocity Mag Pulse Proto Model #003B-S5.

She manages to get in and make a copy, and a sneaky backup copy, before she gets out, but she is called to Mr Donahue’s office.

I didn’t know treason was part of the corporate strategy?

Donahue is not impressed to say the least, but he is backed into a corner now, and he takes the easy way out, allowing Lee to make her escape back to the FBI. Where she is introduced to John and his Wit Sec protection. She refuses his help and heads home thinking she can get on with her life.

But with her having the only evidence now that high ups have diverted her disk she handed into the FBI, she is a target of those trying to sell these experimental weapons, and she is going to need Johns’ help against those that want that evidence and those that are corrupt in the government.

It’s for you… You’ve just been erased.

Eraser is one of the defining action films of the 1990s, and Arnie at his best, and it’s great to see James Caan (Blood Ties, Detachment) and James Coburn (A Fistful Of Dynamite, The Great Escape), as it is now on 4k UHD it is well worthy of gracing your action shelf.

Eraser is now available on 4K UHD, and also as a Steelbook

 

 

On-Disc Special Features

• Reinventing the Modern Action Hero — The Evolution of Arnold (6 mins)

• ’90s Action Thriller Reimagined (9 mins)