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Arnold Schwarzenegger as secret agent Luke Brunner: Breaking out of the fortress of mindfulness

Photo: Christos Kalohoridis / Netflix

Arnold Schwarzenegger is 75 years old. When he plays in a comedy in which he self-deprecatingly targets the relevance and potency of aging action heroes, as is now the case in the Netflix series "Fubar", a gag about Viagra is of course not to be missed.

And the gag goes like this: Schwarzenegger, as an intelligence agent in Kazakhstan, is supposed to stop a high-speed train with material for a dirty bomb, at the same time he instructs his sidekick to observe his ex-wife's new galan, which is also no longer quite dewy. He throws in four Viagra pills before the date. "Four blue ones!" the sidekick shouts into the button in Schwarzenegger's ear, which he understands as an instruction to open four blue valves to stop the train with the bomb material. The train actually stops - and the nuclear catastrophe can be averted despite all the shepherd's hour troubles.

Self-irony or not, Schwarzenegger apparently does not want to raise doubts about his own virility: Viagra is needed by others, not him. After all, he's just been officially appointed "Chief Action Officer" by Netflix, so there's no question of giving up.

For all the world-saving, Schwarzenegger's soon-to-retire secret agent has neglected his wife and daughter for the past 30 years; in disguise as a traveling salesman for sports equipment, he traveled the globe to take out supervillains. He has the lost woman (Fabiana Udenio) spied on in order to win her back; the daughter (Monica Barbaro) has meanwhile become a super agent herself without his knowledge.

Where was Dad at Math Olympiad?

Because the secret service headquarters and the Netflix Writers' Room want it that way, father and daughter have to go on foreign missions together from now on. In the course of the inevitable killing processes, there is plenty of time for family therapy concerns. While the two of them kill terrorists in the jungle of Guyana in the jeep, the daughter complains about how she used to miss Dad's support at violin concerts and math Olympiads. And while she tries to elicit secret information from a scientist in her underwear in Moldova, the old man ponders whether everything went right in the enlightenment of his teenage daughter while observing the love trap.

Stalking his ex, watching his daughter have sex – »Fubar« contains passages that are astonishing in their questionability, even in a testosterone-driven parade of Zoten like this Schwarzenegger vehicle. Especially since the movie star is taking on the lead role for a series for the first time at Netflix, of all places. The U.S. streaming service is considered a fortress of mindfulness.

In »Fubar«, however, all diversity requirements and correctness regulations are literally overblown: Schwarzenegger's sidekick in the series is a squeaking black man (Milan Carter) who causes chaos on the computer. For the comic relief during bloody missions, a funny fat woman in unflattering clothes (Fortune Feimster) is responsible. The geopolitical background between the South American jungle and the anarchic Caucasus looks like it did shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Arnie is back – and he brought us the nineties.

That alone wouldn't be bad. But it also brings back memories of a decade in which Schwarzenegger made fun of his image as an action hero in a much more artistic way.

Barbarian, Cyborg, Comedian

No sooner had he established himself as a barbarian (Conan) or cyborg (Terminator) as Hollywood's most efficient human machine in the eighties than he was already playing with relish with the cult of masculinity and indestructibility around his person: The films made during this time, such as "Last Action Hero" by John McTiernan (1993) or "True Lies" by James Cameron (1994), are highlights of popcorn cinema, which have aged pretty well. This is also due to the fact that they always reflected on the means of production and the tricks behind storytelling with huge production costs.

You won't find this self-deprecating sophistication in »Fubar« (directed by Phil Abraham) – although the plot of the torn action hero, who is worn down between saving the world and family life, is clearly inspired by »True Lies«. But where in Cameron's cinema epic the hero was led by the balancing act between Biedermann and crowbar into ludicrous stunt courses, the material is now broken down to the most common series formula in the current Netflix manner, which fully complies with the streaming provider's current comedy conventions with its dramaturgical permanent idleness. »Emily in Paris«, »Arnie in Kazakhstan«, you can easily hop from one format to another.

The fact that the character of Schwarzenegger threatens to disappear in the format built around her is the unintentional ironic punch line of the series. Its title, »Fubar«, is a term borrowed from the military, which is considered an acronym for describing the condition of injured people: Fucked up beyond all recognition, mutilated beyond recognition. Unfortunately, this also applies to the action icon Schwarzenegger after this gag massacre.

»Fubar« is on Netflix