There’s no doubt the collaboration of James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s on The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day are the duo’s most popular films, but when it comes to True Lies it’s the one film from Cameron where he really let loose with the humor and yet still maintained the level of action we’ve come to expect from him.
The film is absurd in most every way and in the midst of telling a story about Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger), a spy attempting to track down nuclear weapons sold to a terrorist organization, Cameron decides to deviate from that plot for a solid hour as the film’s lead character suspects his wife, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), of infidelity. With the help of his partner (Tom Arnold) and all the government resources at his disposal, he spies on his unsuspecting wife in a movie that seems to have been pitched as “What if James Bond lived in suburbia with a wife and kid?”
This is True Lies, a film so deliberately absurd it works, but only because it’s approached with such a straight face. Even as Harry hovers in a Harrier jet over Miami, his daughter (Eliza Dushku) clinging to the broken cockpit window and Art Malik as Aziz, the leader of the terrorist organization the Crimson Jihad, walks along the spine of the jet, machine gun in hand, we are exhilarated even though he know all will end well, but it’s how it ends that matters.
What follows is a scene so utterly absurd it shocks me people have, even more absurdly, taken it to task for just how absurd it is. Harry tells his daughter to hold on, pitches the plane to the right, Aziz slides down the wing ultimately catching on one of the attached missiles. Harry arms the missile and delivers the film’s chief catchphrase, “You’re fired”, sending the missile and Aziz screaming through a gaping hole in a half-destroyed building where it detonates on the other side, destroying a helicopter filled with terrorists and saving the day.
The thrill here is not in the threat. Cameron realizes there really is no threat. We don’t think Arnold or his daughter are going to be killed by terrorists just as we didn’t think Harry and his wife would be tortured once they were captured and handcuffed earlier in the movie. Cameron ends virtually every so-called “threat” in this movie with a punch line while also not allowing the film to linger afterward. There is no, “See, that was funny right?” moment. Instead he moves things along, allowing only that brief moment where you can chuckle before the next action beat or plot development takes place.
For example:
- As the film opens and Arnold is investigating an arm’s dealer, he realizes he’s been found out. Does he immediately shoot his way out? No, he dances the tango with Tia Carrere and then gives us a Bond-esque chase through the snow.
- After Helen does her dance for Harry and the two are abducted, Cameron keeps it light as Helen yells at Harry to let her take care of it, still believing her husband to be nothing more than a salesman.
- As the “threat” of Harry and Helen being tortured looms, Harry, drugged out of his mind, calmly and comically explains how he’s going to kill his would be torturer and the guard in the room. “And what makes you think you can do all that?” the torturer asks (fun performance from Charles Cragin by the way). “You know my handcuffs? I picked them.” Action ensues, camera turns to a bewildered Helen for a another mild chuckle, not a loud one, but quietly to yourself because Cameron barely allows you the time to breathe before moving on.
The film is filled with such examples and while Roger Ebert in his review of the film, complains of the film’s “unconvincing interlude where the hero suspects adultery” I have to respectfully disagree. Without that interlude you just have another film where the hero’s family is captured by the bad guy, giving him added reason to do the job he was already going to do in the first place. Cameron uses this interlude to not only entertain and keep the mood light, he throws you off balance while also giving us the comedic genius of Bill Paxton as Simon the used car salesman and the absurd, yet hilarious (and somewhat weirdly sexy, but not) dance from Jamie Lee Curtis before she raps her husband over the head with a rotary telephone.
And so far I’ve just talked about the obvious, stand out moments and I haven’t yet mentioned the bridge sequence or Arnold chasing Aziz through downtown Miami on horseback, the bathroom brawl or smaller moments such as the terrorist’s camera battery dying, Charlton Heston as commander Spencer Trilby giving us an early nod to Marvel’s Nick Fury or soon-to-be Oscar winning producer and Oscar-nominated writer Grant Heslov (Argo, Good Night, and Good Luck.) as tech guru Faisal telling Trilby they call Aziz the Sand Spider. “Why?” Trilby asks. Faisil replies, Probably because it sounds scary.” No self-awareness, just straight-forward, subtle humor and it works.
True Lies is a remake of the 1991 French film La totale! and there have constantly been talks of a sequel, with Cameron at one point promising ‘a James Bond type film and not a pre-terrorist action film’. That sequel obviously never came to be, in fact, given the film is now 20 years old, having been released on July 15, 1994 and finishing third at the box office that year, it’s amazing 20th Century Fox has still yet to release it on Blu-ray.
We don’t get a lot of films like True Lies any longer (I’d say Knight and Day is as close as we’ve come). This is an R-rated comedy that today would have been snipped down to a PG-13 rating with the excising of a few uses of the word “fuck” and perhaps a little less bloodshed, but it’s the fact it isn’t inhibited by censorship that helps it work. Curtis’ dance would have probably needed to be edited as the MPAA would have certainly requested a few snips here and there, but all of which would have thrown off the film’s timing all for the sake of box office, rather than releasing the best movie possible.
All told, True Lies may not be Cameron’s “best” film, but it very well be my “favorite” film he’s ever made. It’s endlessly watchable, funny thanks to the performances from Curtis, Paxton and notably Tom Arnold who delivers with perfect timing throughout, action-packed and the use of the Harrier was perfect as it’s not a jet typically seen on film and the way Cameron used it was inventive, absurd and altogether entertaining, a good way to describe the film as a whole.
