Schwarzenegger Readying His Return to the Action Genre

For all the talk about how his cameo brought down the house in last August's The Expendables (and it's true – it did, especially the "He wants to be President!" line), people weren't exactly standing in line for all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's action vehicles from the late 90s and on. The last hit for him was Eraser and by the time Terminator 3 rolled along, he was just cashing all his chips in and, of course, all the attention of that was from his gubernatorial bid for California going on.

But the question is with him out of office and a clear desire to be return to the silver screen, can Schwarzenegger be taken seriously again as an action-star? Personally, I don't think so at face value. This Governator non-sense hasn't helped that cause (whether or not, the project was intended to be ironic – which I seriously doubt). All that did is adding more validity that he's merely a walking parody of his former self.

It's a challenge director Jee-woon Kim and the makers behind Last Stand face with the news of Schwarzenegger making the action-thriller his first starring role since the afore-mentioned Terminator 3.

First broken by Movie Web and verified by both /film and Heat Vision, he'll play a sheriff trying to bring down an on-the-run drug cartel leader. If their intention is to play up how much older he is now and how he's out of shape compared to those days where he served on President Bush the Elder's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, it could genuinely work. It'd make him human on-screen; something I can't recall seeing.

But if it's just him as the invulnerable, perfect physical specimen yet again, don't count on it.