In Netflix show Fubar, Arnold Schwarzenegger reprises a role he invented and continues to ace it

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Fubar, which dropped on Netflix on May 25, 2023. (Screen grab)

In Netflix’s Fubar, Luke, a retiring CIA agent played by Arnold Schwarzenegger tells a junior subordinate: “I have a thousand ways to wreck your life and you wouldn’t even know it was me.” It’s a rude little threat between colleagues that in another Arnold film, might have felt like a feral warning. Here instead it stands for comedy, the kind of primeval macho posturing that in the day of data and virtual confrontations feels a bit antique. The eight-part Netflix series brings Arnold back in an avatar we have seen before. This is the genre of tough men dealing with modest familial assignments. In Fubar, Arnold retraces known territory with typically gruff, unshaven exteriors and a naïve, soft interior that makes him a two-handed walking, talking punchline. It’s a role that the actor, with the help of James Cameron quite possibly, invented.

In Fubar, Arnold must again balance the weight of his municipal family life with his hidden, more thrilling life as an agent. Just that this time around, he is older, retiring and perhaps on the wane. Luke happens to have a daughter, who (this is no spoiler really) also happens to be in the CIA (without his knowledge). It’s a giveaway that arrives far too quickly in a show that though rehearsed and derivative could have made much more of an interesting premise. Instead, the series is a frequently fun but all-together draggy version of the tough-guy-dealing-with-prosaic-life spiel that has become a genre in itself. The fact that the man who has since his heady days as a global action star been to politics and back to appear in a show where self-deprecation is part and parcel, tells you a lot about the continuing relevance of a trope whose utility lies in trimming masculinity’s worst instincts.

The late '80s and the early '90s possibly saw the greatest surge in the rise of the action hero. Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold, Van Damme, Steven Seagal and the lot rose to global prominence, riding a wave of hegemonic masculinity that obscured the violent foundations on which it was pillared. This was also an era without the easy perforation of social media and its anxiety-driving features when it comes to the politics of the body. Fat-free, muscular torsos were expected in the action hero, a kind of visual beacon to signal a kind physical superiority. It made the preposterous feel acceptable, the violence, the deaths, feel sensually compelling as opposed to socially jarring. But as Newton’s third law would have it, someone would rip up that script of toxicity and place on the wide, horse-like shoulders of the flawlessly built man a greater burden – that of family.

In Stop or My Mom Will Shoot (1992), Stallone played a cop oppressed by his clingy mom into hilarious subservience. Possibly this reactive genre’s finest film to date, however, came with Arnold’s portrayal of a spy, spying on his own wife, with Cameron’s enthralling True Lies (1994). Not enough credit is given to the landmark film that teased a new template for the rudimentary actioner - whimsical, humorous and built around a genuinely soft protagonist. In the film, Arnold is the reluctant romantic, who espouses a certain grace and restraint in the face of obvious conflict. It’s a role he somewhat essayed again with aplomb in Jingle All The Way (1996), a film where a desperate father turns into a superhero of sorts for a celebratory Christmas day. Arnold in a Christmas classic is possibly one of the greatest casting coups of all time.

Action heroes other than Stallone and Arnold have mimicked the template as well. In The Pacifier (2005), Vin Diesel, fresh off of his twin roles as action hero in The Fast and the Furious and XXX, played an agent who must contend with the mundane, but strikingly more challenging job of looking after a family. He changes diapers, tells bedtime stories and of course kicks the odd butt when it presents itself. Van Damme, had a comedic cameo in popular series Friends whereas the Dwayne Johnson has offered himself for a punchline or two in the comedy spy film Get Smart (2008) (also where the India’s very own Great Khali played a soft-on-the-inside baddie) and most recently in Central Intelligence.

The sight of a robust man, widely celebrated for his vigour and splendorous exteriority, being outwitted by the randomness of life itself, is a precarious but rewarding sight. Not only does it reverse that coarsened image of a man brutalizing everything in sight, it also feels rewarding because the skin these punchlines puncture, is culturally thicker than most. In Fubar, Arnold is at his funniest while exchanging chaste curses with a daughter beyond his purview – more so as an agent than his father. It not only cuts him down to size, as unthinkable as it might seem, it also helps build competing characters, their sense of solidity, instantly. Between actual punches and punchlines, it’s probably the latter that Arnold has done more with. In Fubar, the once wrecking machine doesn’t get the perfect homage, but does manage to remind everyone of the ease with which he slotted into a genre, that he himself helped create. It’s a treat and for a change, the kind of trope that can only really be encouraged.

Fubar dropped on Netflix on May 25, 2023.