By Marc S. Sanders
James Cameron’s True Lies never had to be believable. It only had to be fun, and it is fun for the first act and most of the third act. Too bad the sitcom like, chauvinistic second act pretty much overthrows the whole picture.
When you watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger pic, you have to take it with a boulder of salt. Throughout his career, he’s been pregnant (never saw Junior), he’s begged God to give him the strength to fight Satan (I’m being honest here. It happened in End Of Days), he’s been tossed out of a plane at thirty thousand feet with no parachute and lands safely in a dumpster (Eraser) and his twin brother has been Danny DeVito. (Do I really need to share the title of that movie?) In True Lies, I have to accept the fact that the muscular body builder with an Austrian accent, and pretty good line delivery, convinces his wife and daughter, played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Eliza Dushku, that he’s simply a boring computer salesman. It’s shocking, utterly shocking, to realize that he is actually a clandestine spy, and his family is completely unaware. See if Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson were in this role, then I’d buy it. Tom Arnold might have been a good pick, but James Cameron settled to make Roseanne’s ex-husband Schwarzenegger’s secondary partner with some comedy bits. He might be the best part of the movie.
A brilliant 007 inspired opening gets this adventure started off with a literal bang at a black-tie affair at a wintery German mansion. Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger) infiltrates the party along with support from his partner Albert (Tom Arnold) who hides in a tech equipped van that’s close by. Harry does the tango with Tia Carrere, which is charming and something new for the Terminator. The outcome of this shoot ’em up episode puts these super spies on the trail of an Arab terrorist who has the capability of unleashing a nuclear arsenal on the United States. When Harry is not chasing this guy on horseback and up high-rise elevators, with the equine in tow, he and Albert report to an eye patch played by Charlton Heston.
Somehow, I sleepwalked into another movie, though. Harry has not been the model family man and when he tries to make amends, he inadvertently hears his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) chatting with a sleezy car salesman (Bill Paxton). Now all of the spy department’s resources change course to surveille Helen and this moron she’s been talking to because this is the episode with the misunderstanding. James Cameron’s script makes very poor efforts to achieve sitcom level comedy. A laugh track couldn’t even save this tripe.
Bill Paxton is a great actor, but he accepted a terrible, unfunny role as he ironically pretends to impress Helen by actual being a spy. Ha!!!! Go figure!!!!
Jamie Lee Curtis is a great actor too, but she agreed to play one of the dumbest women to ever grace a screen. She believes this moron’s lies as easily as she believes the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger is just a computer nerd.
One of the most intolerable scenes I can ever think of occurs after Harry learns what is really going on. He gladly continues to play one over on his neglected and unhappy wife by believing he’ll give her a fun adventure he thinks she deserves. Helen is convinced that she must abide by the wishes of a clandestine government group who apprehends her. She arrives at a dark hotel room with Harry sitting in the shadows, mere feet away, and convinces his wife to do a striptease dance in front of a stranger. This routine goes on for the longest five minutes. It’s not funny. It’s not sexy. It’s eerie and perverted with sick narrow mindedness.
At the risk of getting political and prudish, Jamie Lee Curtis has always been one of the most outspoken celebrities for equal treatment between men and women and has ostracized those in positions of power who work towards their own self advantage. Yet here she allows herself to be objectified by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger to be a punchline for male chauvinistic pranks. If this scene ended with Curtis breaking Schwarzenegger’s nose with a karate chop while holding him at gunpoint, then this becomes something else. That’s a no, however. Instead, she is a scantily clad victim of sexual deviants, and she never stands up for herself, or exudes any kind of pride. I recall in 1994 not liking this sequence. Over thirty years later, well after the tides of the Me-Too movement have passed, I still hate this material. With all of the high-flying stunts and action thrown in to other parts of the movie, it is this scene that stays with me.
Once this stupid story detour is over with a cast of actors enhancing its inanity, do I sleepwalk my way back into the movie I was watching before. Whattya know? The Arab terrorist who has not been discussed for the last forty-five minutes, still exists. So, while being held captive, this becomes an opportune time for the unhappy couple to sort through their baggage.
True Lies starts out so fun and when the action is turned on, James Cameron and his team are offering some solid footage. Helicopters, limos, and missiles fly over a bridge running from the Florida Keys. Then it is ridiculous silliness with a fighter jet piloted by Schwarzenegger who uses the entire cache of weapons to wipe out the one bad guy while trying to rescue his daughter who his hanging from a crane high in the skies over Miami. Some say the slapstick of The Three Stooges is a demonstration in violence. I ask if those critics have seen True Lies because the mayhem is absolutely bonkers.
I can’t endorse this movie because I think it is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s worst films. It’s also one of James Cameron’s most awful efforts. The action is marvelously over the top, but the characters are reprehensibly idiotic and the film gets hijacked by a whole other storyline that is neither funny nor worth caring about. There are so many better options to select from this writer/director, and this entire cast.
With an absence of untruth, I am being forthright by declaring that True Lies belongs back within the scummy cauldron from it was stirred up from.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 