At the time of writing, its worldwide box office takings are a little over $33m.
Especially when his co-star is Johnny Knoxville.
And to be fairer, its actually a much better film than those numbers would suggest.
Surprisingly violent, funny in places, hilariously cliched in others.
But its not a great Arnie film.
And its not a great Arnie performance.
Too much emoting, not enough quotable dialogue.
Give him the right material now and he could still be (step forward Tarantino.
No one could touch him.
A greater sense of humour and self-awareness than Bruce Willis.
A better way with the one-liner than Sylvester Stallone.
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But hes always been more than just a muscle-bound action star.
So these are 10 of his best performances.
Not in any good to better order or anything as cruelly subjective as that.
You cant ask me to choose my favourite Arnie performance from the below.
I love them all equally.
Interesting fact number one: Arnie has won a Golden Globe.
The same year that the co-writer ofThe Expendables 2was winning a Best Screenplay Oscar.
1977 seems a long time ago now, doesnt it?
Or maybe they just realised that Arnold was actually really good this time around.
Stay Hungry captures Arnie at his least self-conscious, a movie star without any movie star baggage.
Maybe it helped that he wasnt carrying the movie, leaving Jeff Bridges to do the heavy lifting.
Can you call this a performance when its actually a documentary?
That was a rhetorical question.
Or one that I already knew the answer to, anyway.
Arnie follows suit, giving a performance that deftly balances exaggeration with reality.
But what stays with you most is his incredible charisma.
Everyone knows the story by now, right?
Schwarzenegger, having just wrappedConan The Barbarian,was being pitched as the Reese hero character.
And it marked the most important collaboration in Schwarzeneggers career.
He gets to play a terrific straight man to Rae Dawn Chongs comic foil.
Shes part shrill sidekick, part mocking send up of how over-the-top all this action movie heroics is.
If onlyLast Action Herohad paid more attention.
But he cut his teeth withPredator, an action-slasher hybrid that pitched Arnie as the final girl.
But he rises above all of them, and with an unexpected grace, too.
This is Schwarzenegger in jeopardy, out-gunned, out-muscled and out-mandible clawed.
He sells panic so well that when the climactic mud-man versusPredatorbattle erupts, its a beauty.
And theres a terrific range from Arnold the actor.
And then he knows how to underplay.
Its likeAmelie, only with less whimsy and more scenes of men getting shot in the kneecap.
Once upon a time there were two Arnolds.
Because this is a story with another two Arnolds: hero and villain, Douglas Quaid and Hauser.
And the joy of it is that Arnie actually makes for a much more interesting villain than hero.
His big bad Hauser is fascinating because hes so likeable.
And Arnie for that grin.
On paper,T2treads perilously close to sacrilege.
On one hand its the ultimate in action movie wish fulfilment control your own unstoppable killing machine!
and on the other a sly frustration of what we want from a Schwarzenegger action film.
This is Arnold neutered.
He cant carry out his default action hero function of dispatching anyone who gets in his way.
But all that doesnt matter once the credits roll and Schwarzenegger takes centre stage.
Lets remember him for how he was here; no pink sunglasses anywhere to be seen.
AfterLast Action Hero, Schwarzenegger needed something to reassert his box office authority.
He has to rely on Tom Arnold.
For the domestic stuff, anyway.
Arnie rises to the Cameron challenge.
Its no coincidence that Schwarzeneggers last great performance comes courtesy of Ivan Reitman.
But this is a rare instance of Arnie rising above the material.
And, on a purely Arnold-the-body level, Junior shouldnt work.
It undermines his physicality rather than building it up.
Lets leave it here, though.
The Reitman-Schwarzenegger show has done us well over three movies.
That rumouredTripletsmight just be pushing it…
