Plenty of different accents throughout, not including Arnold's Austrian brogue!
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This movie is an odd one for me. It was made at the absolute height of Arnies fame, his star never higher than after the release of his biggest film Terminator 2. It was directed by john McTeirnan and had the backing of a huge budget and marketing campaign.
And it flopped, badly.
Now, one of the reasons was a certain dinosaur movie that pioneer one week earlier and was a true phenomenon, but that was only part of the story.
At this point in time, no one was a bigger star than Arnold. He'd surpassed Stallone, who'd been on a downturn since ruling the box office for most of the 80s, and his last 4 films, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop and T2 had all been huge hits. He was considered untouchable at this point, and LAH was surely another hit. And he told everyone who'd listen in interviews long before its release that "the critics have already said it's a HUGE Summer hit". But behind the scenes, problems were emerging. The budget, already high for a summer tentpole at that time, was increasing, and the insistence on the opening weekend date even before shooting started caused even more problems.
Then came the marketing.
Now, it wasn't that unusual in the 80s for adult targeted action films to have toys targeting the children's market segment. Robocop is an insanely violent (and insanely good!) film which had an action figure range young boys were desperate for back in the late 80s. But by 93, Arnold was concerned the use of firearms would have on impressionable young minds, As such, his action figure didn't carry one and all posters and marketing for the film were diluted too, which turned off many young movie goers expecting another T2 or Total Recall style violence fest. Finally, and most expensively, the marketing included spending an absolute fortune advertising the film on the side of the space shuttle which unfortunately ended up launching after the film had been released, rendering it almost pointless.
So, upon release and without good reviews to withstand the Jurassic Park onslaught, LAH bombed in the US and only just made its money back internationally, a huge disappointment for the studio and a reality check for Arnold, although he managed to bounce back the following year with the already made True Lies.
So why is it here? Because despite everything, it's still an interesting and, if also deeply flawed, undeniably entertaining time at the movies. The movie within a movie story has been done before, but the satire is spot on at times and Arnold is great in a genuinely risky role. Add Charles Dance, having an absolute ball as the villainous Mr Benedict, and you have a movie well worth two hours of your time.