Arnie is back. He always comes back. But this time Arnie is old. Really, really old. Which isn’t to be ageist at all, it’s just that when you’re 75, being able to pull off the action hero role proves to be a bit hard in Fubar. You shouldn’t be worried for Arnie as he goes through an action set-piece. For fans like me, he’s always been the indestructible hero throwing bad guys through windows with one flex of his Austrian oak arms. Now, although stunt doubles cover 80% of this roll, you still wince for him when he swings a punch or has to jump on a jeep. Careful, big man, don’t make him hold an Uzi, it weighs like 9 pounds.
Anyway, all wincing aside this is a pretty fun exercise in mediocrity, as Arnie heads into his first TV streamer series with a variation on one of his most fun, and daft blockbusters, True Lies.
In Fubar, Arnie is a CIA operative called Luke Brunner, on the verge of retirement when he is dragged back into the field. When he hears the son of one of his major kills is selling a nuke in a suitcase (ah, don’t worry about it), and is about to expose an undercover agent on the scene, Arnie has to go in and rescue this undercover agent, who turns out to be his daughter, Emma (Monica Barbaro). Yes, she’s not a straight-laced straight-A student at all, but a kick-ass spook. But she’s angry at him too, because he never told her he was an undercover ass-kicker either.
So yes, all very True Lies; the action film where Arnie’s wife Jamie Lee Curtis had no clue the prime Mr Universe she was married to was not a dorky business software sales guy after all, but a secret agent. For those unlucky enough to be born after the brainless blockbuster glory years, this was James Cameron aiming a Scud missile at Bond, and delivering enough wit and sexiness and big explosions to please crowds everywhere.
This is the same deal, only thing have been dialled down a notch; it’s a bit Aldi True Lies, where the action is at a snail’s pace – possibly due to Arnie’s limitations – and the wit is a bit dulled (Arnie: “You’ve been lying to me the whole decade…and you smoke!”). The series plays out with Luke and Emma bickering as they use improbable tech to hunt down the bad guy terrorists, with a semi-amusing support team lead by Barry, the ‘man in the chair’ (a likeable Milan Carter).
It’s an action series that doesn’t take itself too seriously but then no action movie takes itself too seriously anymore (apart from the last few terrible Daniel Craig Bond films) and it all feels a bit samey. It’s watchable without being loveable, funny without being witty, and swaggering without being cool. It’s basically the same as Red Notice (the Ryan Reynolds and The Rock one), Citadel (the slick one on Amazon now), and Lupin (the French one), with the wannabe cool soundtrack, wannabe cool camera angles, the wannabe cool one-liners and the wannabe quirkiness.
This latter tendency brings up some truly odd choices in Fubar: for example, Emma hiding inside of a dead cow to assassinate some bad guys. “You could have just hidden in the bushes,” says Arnie (who has indeed just come out of the bushes) as if that gets the screenwriters out of the naughty corner. I’m not sure if AI has taken over the screenwriting just yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this series were written by ChatGPT: ‘write me an action series for Arnold Schwarzenegger that’s True Lies directed by Steven Soderbergh and The Coen Brothers’. And this is the slightly off-the-mark result.
The major differentiation here – and the series’ saving grace - is of course Arnie, that icon of cinema. The 75 year old, but playing 65 here, and without his famous muscles to rely on, he has to lean on his comic muscles instead. Which, to be fair, have always been pretty good, especially when he has a decent comic opposite him. Danny DeVito brought that out well in Twins, but he was pretty funny opposite Rae Dawn Chong way back in 1986’sCommando.
While the repartee between father and daughter here isn’t exactly Succession level - “Honey, I’m sorry I cursed.” “Dad, I don’t give a shit.” - there’s some nice moments along the way, like Arnie in his daughter’s room appalled to see she own some garish lipstick, only to find its actually a vibrator, as Emma screams, “kill me now.”
Fubar stands for ‘fucked up beyond all recognition’ but it’s not really all that fucked up. Instead, it’s fairly standard fare which is a perfectly acceptable vehicle for Arnie coming back, but which also feels a little bit like a wasted opportunity. How about giving the big man something decent to play with? To play knowingly on the legacy. Commando 2: This Time It’s Not Personal? Alien & Predator vs Arnie? Conan the Octogenarian?
