W A R N I N G ! -- Plot ploints discussed...hit 'd' now or save to read after the movie if you want to be surprised.
"True Lies", the latest effort from James ("Aliens") Cameron, certain- ly has its (reputed) $120 million on the screen. Cameron seems to spent a few weekends watching Jackie Chan films while muttering to himself, "Aww, I can do that!" And as spectacle, "True Lies" is indeed hard to match. The film starts off well enough with a James-Bond-like escapade -- Arnold flirts with Tia Carrere, (a corporate antiquites dealer) acesses some computer files upstairs to get some dirt for the plot, and escapes with dozens of armed guards in various pursuit vehicles. It's great fun, and the action and light dusting of humor works well together. Then the problems start to surface. We soon learn that Arnold's marriage (to Jamie Lee Curtis, in another engaging performance) is on shaky ground -- being a super-spy takes up a lot of your quality time, and the opening escapade made him miss his own birthday party with his wife and daughter. We're told that this happens quite a bit, since Arnold's buddy (Tom Arnold) seems to be in constant backup/support mode, both in his professional and personal life to a degree. The marital strain comes to a head when Arnold discovers that his wife is having an affair with a used-car salesman (played foot-to-the-floor by Bill "Game Over" Paxton) who is pretending to be a spy to attract her interest. It seems Jamie Lee is bored and wants some excitement in her life. What would seem to be a terrific premise -- Spy loses wife to fake spy, but can't win her back by telling the truth without endangering her life -- begins to unravel in the middle of the film. Arnold, now in a jealous tiff, uses the agency's personnel and technology to tail his own wife and discover who his rival is. This seems reasonable (since being a spy is what he does for a living), if excessive (even being as open as he seems to be, he refuses to confront her with it at the dinner table -- it's more "fun" to break out the helicopters, men in camoflage and eentsy-teensy cameras). He then breaks into the rival's trailer (an understatement -- it's torn in two by automatic weapons' fire) and, "disguised" as a terrorist group, kidnaps both of them. The car salesman is carted out in the middle of nowhere and threatened -- this guy is such a scumbag that it does work as comedy -- while the wife is brought to an interrogation room (presumably back at the agency) and pumped by the two Arnolds in order to find out just what has happened in this affair and what state his marriage is in. This is also played for laughs, but it comes off as more manipulative (almost cruel) than funny. If you're concerned that your wife doesn't love you any more, jerking her around in such a flamboyant manner seems like an odd way to show it. When Arnold asks her if she loves her husband and she says she always has and always will, we're supposed to be touched. It's just hard not to wonder how she would feel if she knew who the interro- gator was. The charade doesn't stop there -- Arnold basically forces his own wife (since she's entangled in this situation, she has to work for the agency or go to prison) into working on a "mission" -- step two of his plan to win her back. The set-up is a "La Femme Nikita" type deal where she is to play the part of a prostitute in order to bug the client's hotel room. Arnold is really the client, but she doesn't know that. Using a recording as a surrogate voice, he orders her to strip and dance in her underwear. This is supposed to be ro- matic (at least in terms of 'spicing up her life'), but it comes off as another bizarre control game. Fortunately, the terrorists who have been playing Mum- bledy-peg during all of this decide to get things underway and capture the two of them. Arnold finally tells Jamie Lee the truth (now that it's mostly unnece- ssary), but he's high on truth serum, so any hope of character development is dashed. The two of them manage to shoot, stab and flame-thrower their way out of the enemy camp. For some odd reason, Arnold can do all the violence he wants (odd after his latest attempts to be PC -- "T2" and "Last Action Hero"), while Jamie Lee's killing is mostly accidental. This is especially odd after the strong female leads in Cameron's other films. Unfortunately, the bad guys have nabbed the remaining warheads (smuggled to their destination inside Persian antiquities -- hence Carrere's role in the plot) and bolted. The remain der of the film involves stopping the terrorists with a Harrier air attack on a bridge, capping off with arnold snagging one of the Harriers to stop the Crazed Terrorist Guy Capable Of Anything to Keep The Plot Going. This culmin- ates in Arnold's daughter being kidnapped, a fight atop the Harrier (which is truly miraculous) which itself ends with a helicopter, some police cars, the villian and at least one floor of a high-rise being destroyed. The film as it stands with its bravura action set-pieces is entertain- ing and funny in spots. Tom Arnold makes a great sidekick, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them together again in Arnold's next one. Overall, though, the film is just as loud and obnoxious as funny -- there's quite a parade of dick/piss jokes, as well as a lot of women-bashing jokes that wear thin. The script in general is pretty juvenile and not terribly intricate considering the good premise underneath. Bill Paxton has one good freak-out. This is the third movie to try aggressively mixing action and humor, and it falls somewhere in between "Demolition Man" (which I felt worked) and "Last Action Hero" (which was a total wipe-out for me). Not recommended.
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- Jeff "When I'm Finished With You, They'll Be Stumbling Over YOU In The Dark" Pidgeon
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