Even passionate movie fans will be excused from not knowing who Luciano Vincenzoni is. Known as “the script doctor,” the Italian screenwriter from Treviso penned the scripts for more than 60 movies, spanning over half a century. Most notably, his credits include For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, two masterpieces of the Spaghetti Western genre directed by Sergio Leone. But Vincenzoni wasn’t afraid of dirtying his hands with some more commercial flicks, including a mid-’80s Arnold Schwarzenegger misfire.
Raw Deal is a 1986 action movie directed by John Irvin, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mark Kaminski, a former FBI agent forced to resign after roughing up a sexual assault suspect. Kaminski, who now works as a county sheriff in rural North Carolina, is drawn back into danger when a former colleague asks him to infiltrate the Chicago mob. Bloodshed ensues. The movie, which was released in between Commando and Predator, is free to watch now on YouTube.
There’s not much to say about the plot of Raw Deal. The film’s highest praise came from New York Times critic Vincent Canby, who described Raw Deal as “better than Stallone’s Cobra” and from Pauline Kael who called it “reprehensible and enjoyable.” The movie is based on an earlier script penned by Vincenzoni and Sergio Donati, another prolific Italian screenwriter, more than a decade earlier. Unfortunately, the final screenplay by Gary DeVore and Norman Wexler leaves a lot to be desired. Raw Deal‘s clichéd plot is garbled by irrelevant side characters and twisted logic.
Still, while Raw Deal may not have a scene with the protagonist making a pizza smoothie, like Cobra does, the movie has its silly, fun moments. The best scene in the movie happens in the first few minutes. It sees Schwarzenegger driving home from his job to find his alcoholic wife Amy, who resents him for having to move to the boonies, baking a cake. The conversation escalates and Aimee throws the cake (on which she has written “shit” with whipped cream) at her husband, who calmly dodges and delivers one of the now-iconic Schwarzenegger lines: “You should not drink and bake.”
Even a diehard Schwarzenegger and ’80s action movie fan like me has to admit that Raw Deal sits quite low on the scale. Still, the movie still showcases Arnold’s uncanny knack for making even the most stock action characters slightly interesting through his natural wit and irony.
If you’re looking for 100 minutes of brain-dead fun with a tinge of ’80s nostalgia, Raw Deal‘s mix of nonsense action and trashy humor might be the right fix for you. And later, you can brag with your friends that you’ve watched a movie by the writer of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.