TRUE LIES
A film review by Jon A. Webb
Copyright 1994 Jon A. Webb
TRUE LIES is the kind of movie LAST ACTION HERO tried to be: a clever, inventive variation on the action movie. It succeeds where LAST ACTION HERO failed because here we actually care about the hero: he's a real person, with a family, even if his adventures as a spy are hardly believable.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a spy whose cover is that he is a insipid computer salesman. Jaime Lee Curtis, who plays his wife, believes his cover and finds her life dull enough to consider having an affair with a used car salesman who pretends to be a spy.
The plot is a little too cute, like LAST ACTION HERO, but it gives a minimally acceptable context for the action in the film, which is where the heart of the movie is. The important thing is that this context supports all sorts of jokes that normally wouldn't appear in an action film. This, and the incredibly good effects (I'm still trying to figure out how they made it appear that they blew up part of that bridge--it couldn't be real, could it?) make this a highly entertaining film, not only for fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
N.B. To appreciate this film you have to accept the usual conceit of action films, which is that of the lone good man battling against evil all around him. In other reviews I've seen, plainly the reviewer didn't do this. If you can't handle stereotypes in the context of an action film, you won't appreciate this film; you'll find it racist (all the bad guys are Arab terrorists) and brutal (people die routinely; women are abused). Schwarzenegger and Curtis turn in the solid performances you'd expect of them from their previous work. Tom Arnold, who plays Schwarzenegger's side-kick, is a real surprise; he's fresh, funny, and a good part of the reason the film is so entertaining. He's just the right choice for this role, after which he should be taken seriously as a comic actor. For example, he'd be a great choice to take over O.J.'s part in the "Naked Gun" series.
The direction (by James Cameron) is tight and makes good use of rapidly improving effects technology. The script is over-written, with a little more intellectual appeal than is really necessary. Schwarzenegger and Curtis are in fine form. All in all, a fine effort.
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