Cinema: Arnold Wry RED HEAT

Bruce, Sylvester, Arnold -- all the sissy boys' names of the '50s have grown up, like onetime 97-lb. weaklings, to take their revenge by attaching themselves to the macho men of the '80s. Springsteen, Stallone . . . Schwarzenegger! Who'd have thought it? That an Austrian body builder with gap teeth and a goofy moniker could become Hollywood's Brahmin of brawn?

Scoffers reckoned without Schwarzenegger's wry star quality: he is a bulkier-than-life creature who knows he's a cartoon. So his pecs-'n'-sex epics have become dependably profitable. And in the occasional election year, he makes a good movie. In 1984's The Terminator he played a killer cyborg -- typecasting for a terrific sci-fi parable. Now he teams with Director Walter Hill for an informal remake of Hill's 1982 hit, 48 HRS.

Back then, Eddie Murphy shot to stardom as a jailbird sprung to help Cop Nick Nolte catch a psychopath. This time Schwarzenegger is a Soviet policeman trailing three vicious cocaine smugglers to Chicago, and his partner in crime busting is Jim Belushi, a detective with a good arrest record and a bad attitude. It's glasnost with a gut punch -- Communism and capitalism partnered to crush the evil empire of recreational drugs.

You expect nothing new in a Schwarzenegger movie, and he usually delivers. Take Red Heat's final runaway-bus chase . . . well, action-movie finales are always boring; that's the time to get the popcorn. But there are pleasing character lines on the film's familiar muscular framework. The script, by Hill, Harry Kleiner and Troy Kennedy Martin, manages to work a little human plausibility, even poignancy, into a couple of cop-movie stereotypes: the black dope lord and the villain's duped wife. Belushi mines quick charm out of his surly role. And Arnold, starched tongue in cheek, is a doll: G.I. Joe in Soviet mufti. He could beat the stuffing out of a toy Rambo. R.C.