3. Mark Kaminsky - Raw Deal (1986)
Arnie hasn't made too many mistakes in terms of the films he picks: usually he is well cast, and the problems come with the overall quality of the movie (aside from the lunacy of Twins) - but in Raw Deal, the actor is horribly miscast. On paper, the concept sounds suited to Arnie: he plays Mark Kaminsky, a discredited former FBI agent struck off for over-zealously beating a child molester, who finds himself working as a small town sheriff, and is given one last chance to be reinstated to the agency if he infiltrates the mob and pulls it down from the inside. But the plot is too silly, and the quality of the writing makes it feel like it should never have made it beyond TV movie status. The film feels oddly antiquated - like it was ripped out of the industry of ten years earlier - and is plainly stupid, culminating in the final sequence, which sees Arnie basically emotionally blackmail his friend, and crippled boss of the FBI into defying medical science and walking again. Naturally it works, and the world rolls its eyes.