The movie opens with the death of a witness who was supposed to testify against the Mafia. In the violent shoot em up FBI Chief Harry Shannon?s son is one of the many killed and Harry swears revenge against the Patrovita family who organised the murders. He turns to ex-FBI agent Mark Kaminsky, played by Arnie, who had been forced to leave the FBI under a cloud of suspicion. Kaminsky has a role as a Sheriff in a two-bit town and his wife hates the backwoods life, turning to the booze to wipe away the memories of how good life used to be in New York. When Shannon seeks to enlist Kaminsky he is only too happy to listen in the hope of resurrecting both his career and his marriage.

After staging his own death Kaminsky goes underground, surfacing as Joseph P Brenner, a small-time hood from Florida who tries to join the Patrovita organisation by showing what he can do. And Brenner can do a lot, as his one-man decimation of a Patrovita gambling den shows and his audacity in stealing from the head man?s girlfriend confirms. Although still a little suspicious, the Patrovita family decides to take Brenner on and he manages to establish himself in the family over time.

Patrovita has lost an enormous amount of drugs and money as a group of bad cops move in on him. He is desperate to get it back and when Brenner comes up with the plan to do so, and it works, Brenner is finally accepted as one of the gang. But his major rival as the muscle for the organisation Max finds out that Brenner isn?t who he claims to be and sets out to kill Brenner. In scenes reminiscent of both the original Terminator and Terminator 2, Arnie decides he has had enough of the bad guys and decides to take them out. When he goes for the black boots, the black leather jacket and the sunglasses as a uniform and he loads up with some serious gunpower we just know the avenger is the Patrovita case and we also know what will happen.

Brenner goes out to the gravel pit owned by the Patrovita?s where the reclaimed money and drugs is being sorted and counted. He creates havoc across the site, slaughtering all and sundry without getting a scratch. This is classic Arnie yet he has even more to do when he goes to the nightclub where the Patrovita?s hang out. Once again the Arnie stereotype blasts hell out of the place and the bad guys and wins the day. He even shows a soft spot for the head man?s girlfriend, helping her to escape with $250,000.00. All?s well that ends well as the now rehabilitated Kaminsky ends the movie back in the FBI, back with his wife and as a father to be. What a guy!

I have to confess that for some reason I like Arnie and the roles he plays like this. It?s obvious in this film, made in 1986, that he is still coming to grips with the English language, that he hasn?t had all the acting lessons that he needs and that the group of his early characters have a high degree of similarity but that doesn?t faze me one bit. Arnie is usually the ultimate warrior who makes life miserable for the bad guys and leads the side of good in the inevitable triumph it deserves. He is an expert in many types of weapons and always seems to be able to take out about 50 bad guys without suffering any real damage himself. He can be a hit with the ladies, can sweet talk the bad guys and has an air of menace that means the baddies had better watch out. While the film may have been written to a bit of a formula for Arnie I still liked it for what it was and thought it was entertaining. Now I wonder if that says more about the movie itself or me?

THE EXTRAS

Apart from subtitles and Scene Selection there aren?t any ? surely we could have had some stunt scenes that went wrong or some outtakes at least.

CONCLUSION

Mark Kaminsky is a disgraced ex-FBI agent, played by Arnie, working as a Sheriff in a small town in North Carolina when his old boss asks him to go undercover to avenge the death of his son. Arnie reinvents himself as Joseph P Brenner and succeeds in worming his way in the Patrovita organisation, eventually killing all the bad guys, winning back his FBI job and rekindling his shaky marriage in the process.