Raw Deal

Directed by John Irvin, Raw Deal follows disgraced FBI agent Mark Kaminski (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as he agrees to infiltrate a violent Chicago mob outfit and bring its various players to justice. It’s a fairly irresistible premise that’s employed to distressingly erratic effect by Irvin, as the filmmaker, working from Gary DeVore and Norman Wexler’s screenplay, delivers a hit-and-miss thriller that fares especially poorly in its slow-moving and surprisingly convoluted first half – with Schwarzenegger’s predictably magnetic performance preventing the viewer from checking out completely during this portion of the proceedings. (And it doesn’t hurt, certainly, that the movie boasts a murderers’ row of first-class character actors, including Sam Wanamaker, Robert Davi, Ed Lauter, and Steven Hill.) There’s little doubt, then, that Raw Deal doesn’t pick up or become the engaging actioner one might’ve anticipated until it progresses into its balls-to-the-wall, gleefully over-the-top third act, with this stretch, which features Schwarzenegger’s protagonist taking on dozens of hired goons both on a construction site and within a bar, essentially compensating for the ineffectiveness of everything preceding it and, ultimately, cementing the picture’s place as a rocky endeavor that nevertheless stands as a must for fans of the Austrian Oak.

*** out of ****