Not being an Arnie fan, I gave this one a miss the first time round, but write this review now, 11 years after the film's making, having recently seen it on TV.
True Lies is a comedy action-thriller, based on a pretty deplorable idea. Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a top American ass-kicking secret agent; but from before and throughout his marriage to wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) Harry has maintained the fiction to her and daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku) that he is a meek and mild computer salesman. Perhaps even more deplorable is that when after some 15 years of lying Harry finds out that Helen is possibly seeing another man - partly due to his own neglect of her - he becomes incensed, and uses all the resources of his agency to subject her to, not one, but two terrifying ordeals, the second with some unsavoury sexual overtones.
Director James Cameron just about gets away with this distasteful storyline because (a) there's some reasonable comic acting by Arnie and Jamie - remember this was before Arnie revealed his full powers as a humorist by becoming Governor of California; (b) Helen is allowed to sock Harry pretty hard, several times, when at the end of the second ordeal she finally recognises him; and (c) the film then immediately moves into full action mode, as Harry and Helen are kidnapped by terrorists, led by menacing fanatic Khaled (Marshall Manesh).
From then on, it's formula, formula, formula; and SFX, SFX, SFX until the closing credits, with the usual nuclear warhead threats, multiple killings of the baddies, hair-raising escapes by our heroes, and a few laughs along the way. The final episode, with Harry doing amazing manoeuvres with a VTO fighter aircraft, stretches credibility beyond breaking point, but in this sort of movie WTF.
What IS credible and depressing about this film is that although it was made 11 years ago, and a full 7 years before 9/11, if the screenplay were submitted to Hollywood today, not one word or piece of action would need to be changed - same terrorists from the same part of the world, threatening to use the same hardware, for the same reasons.
True Lies is a comedy action-thriller, based on a pretty deplorable idea. Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a top American ass-kicking secret agent; but from before and throughout his marriage to wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) Harry has maintained the fiction to her and daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku) that he is a meek and mild computer salesman. Perhaps even more deplorable is that when after some 15 years of lying Harry finds out that Helen is possibly seeing another man - partly due to his own neglect of her - he becomes incensed, and uses all the resources of his agency to subject her to, not one, but two terrifying ordeals, the second with some unsavoury sexual overtones.
Director James Cameron just about gets away with this distasteful storyline because (a) there's some reasonable comic acting by Arnie and Jamie - remember this was before Arnie revealed his full powers as a humorist by becoming Governor of California; (b) Helen is allowed to sock Harry pretty hard, several times, when at the end of the second ordeal she finally recognises him; and (c) the film then immediately moves into full action mode, as Harry and Helen are kidnapped by terrorists, led by menacing fanatic Khaled (Marshall Manesh).
From then on, it's formula, formula, formula; and SFX, SFX, SFX until the closing credits, with the usual nuclear warhead threats, multiple killings of the baddies, hair-raising escapes by our heroes, and a few laughs along the way. The final episode, with Harry doing amazing manoeuvres with a VTO fighter aircraft, stretches credibility beyond breaking point, but in this sort of movie WTF.
What IS credible and depressing about this film is that although it was made 11 years ago, and a full 7 years before 9/11, if the screenplay were submitted to Hollywood today, not one word or piece of action would need to be changed - same terrorists from the same part of the world, threatening to use the same hardware, for the same reasons.