He has a surprisingly strong set of enjoyable movies.
Predator, Running Man, True Lies, Total Recall, they hold up fairly well.
His best performance in my opinion was in True Lies. He really played a bit more of a complex character as opposed to a mildly charismatic tough guy. Twins was a film where you could tell he enjoyed being given a little range.
True Lies may also be his -best- movie. But it's James Cameron and he does good action movies - they are slick and well-planned and executed. They may be a bit tropey and derivative, but they are the top of that particular heap.
But personally I think Predator is my favorite film of his. It's got such a compelling mood and it's a great slow-burn.
Like the best action movies, it establishes all the characters and their skillsets well and very quickly so you like them enough to be more horrified by what is done to them. Alien and Aliens did this well. Die Hard. For B movies, Great Big Sea. Not a faceless sea of henchmen.
Such a subtle use of science-fiction. The less you knew about the Predators, the more mysterious and unfathomable they were, more of a HP Lovecraft unknowable horror. That's the downside of turning these films into franchises. People shoehorn all kinds of knowledge later into the film that wasn't there when it was made.
I watch it every so often and I'm never disappointed.
I loved Terminator 2 but mainly when it came out. It was huge. It was the entire summer. (James Cameron again).
But it hasn't aged as well as I'd hoped. It's less timeless and more awkward. The slang is overused so it sounds like an after school special.
By the time I saw Last Action Hero, I assumed it was the Ishtar of its time, but I really enjoyed it and I don't really get why it was so badly reviewed. The digs at the tropes in action movies are pretty funny.