Summer of ‘94: True Lies
Some men would rather misappropriate national security resources than go to marital counseling.
One of my entries for last year’s Summer of 1993 was the notorious Arnold Schwarzenegger fiasco, The Last Action Hero. The John McTiernan-directed action-comedy – which is flawed, but not as bad as its reputation suggests – made headlines for being an over-expensive, loud and unfunny mess, with much of the blame pointed at Schwarzenegger’s hubris and control. Some wondered if it was the death knell for Arnold’s career as a movie star.
Just one year later, he was doing just fine.
Schwarzenegger rebounded in a big way with True Lies, his reunion with Terminator and Terminator 2 director James Cameron. A remake of the 1991 French comedy La Totale! the film is a more down-the-middle bit of action-comedy than Last Action Hero, with some of the most impressive action sequences of both Arnold and Cameron’s careers. It went on to be the third-highest-grossing film of 1994, just behind other summer hits The Lion King and Forrest Gump.
I honestly can’t remember if I’d ever seen True Lies all the way through. I definitely didn’t see it in theaters, as this was the last summer before my parents got a bit more chill with R-rated films. I know it played constantly on HBO, and I’m sure I must have rented it at some point. Certain scenes stood out in my head, but I don’t for sure know if I’d ever seen it from beginning to end before this recent viewing. So, I was curious what I would think of this last action-heavy effort from Cameron before he became king of the world with Titanic and then gave his life to Avatar.
The results are mixed.
Classic Arnold
In True Lies, Schwarzenegger plays Harry Tasker, an agent with the Omega Sector – the last line of defense, the organization called in when the CIA and FBI can’t save the day. He’s an American James Bond, introduced breaking through the ice outside a Swiss manor and removing his wetsuit to reveal a perfectly pressed tuxedo underneath. Tasker’s a classic Arnold character, equipped with just as many quips as bullets, and surrounded by a team that he can joke around with (Tom Arnold and Grant Heslov). Harry’s wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) is unaware of her husband’s globe-trotting career, however, thinking he’s a bland computer salesman. While he’s off fighting bad guys, she’s sitting at home bored, but her life perks up when a sleazy car salesman (Bill Paxton) shows up claiming to be a secret agent. When Harry finds out, his suspicions of his wife’s affair distract him from stopping a terrorist in possession of nuclear warheads.
One of my favorite running gags throughout Schwarzenegger’s career is whenever anyone accepts him as a mild-mannered everyguy, when just one look makes it clear he’s fit for nothing more than beating up bad guys. True Lies gets away with this because the entire thing is played as comedy; the instant two guard dogs attack Harry and he bashes their heads together, you know exactly that none of this is to be taken seriously.
True Lies is the type of bombastic, over-the-top Schwarzenegger movie that Last Action Hero parodied, only without the confusing and dark meta baggage. It’s a big, violent dose of what Arnold does best, helmed by one of our top action filmmakers at his prime. And when it works, it’s a blast.
Few action stars were as comfortable poking fun at their personality as Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he leans into the silliness. Everything he does in the film’s opening sequence – emerging from the lake in a tuxedo, dancing the tango with Tia Carrere, outrunning dogs and henchmen as he escapes from the compound – is patently ridiculous and the wrong tone would make this movie either a hammy mess or a dunder-headed action movie. Modern action stars like The Rock would likely have a quip but still try to play badass – John Cena might be able to capture the right tone – but Schwarzenegger is breezy and funny. He knows that it’s truly unbelievable that anyone with his build and size could be perceived as anything other than a powerhouse, which is why he can sell a line like “I love the computer business” straight and still make it funny.
James Cameron doesn’t get enough credit for his knack of matching tone with material. People might grumble that Titanic is too much a sweeping teen romance or the Avatar movies too earnest, but the tones of those films are crucial to their appeal. Titanic would be a slog if the real-life tragedy weren’t leavened by a classic movie love story and the world of Avatar would likely be too complex if a more nuanced, intricate plot crowded out the world-building. And Cameron understands how crucial tone is to True Lies’ success. Like Last Action Hero, it’s a comedy, but the laughs are much broader, relying less on meta gags and references and more on reaction shots, one-liners and physical comedy. Tom Arnold plays Harry’s partner, and while he’s someone who’s historically grated on me, I think his enthusiasm and energy are on-point for the heightened workplace comedy Cameron’s building. True Lies builds its world in broad strokes – for cryin’ out loud, Charlton Heston (in an underused role) plays their boss – and the humor fits with the big, bombastic action moments.
And those action scenes are some of the best Cameron has ever created. The film’s opening escape from the mansion – a dash through the snow that ends in a careening van – is thrilling and fun, but it’s just a warm-up. The film’s centerpiece is an extended action sequence inside and across a hotel, starting with a drenching brawl in a bathroom and then extending into a chase that culminates with Arnold riding a horse up to – and nearly across – the hotel roof. It’s big, it looks expensive, it’s funny and exciting. It deserves to be on a short list of the greatest action movie moments of the 1990s. And the films climactic shootout and bridge chase is another all-timer, peppered with comedic moments like Jamie Lee Curtis accidentally dropping an Uzi and killing all the villains in a room, and the bone-shattering explosions that tear apart a bridge in the Florida Keys. Few directors have known how to unleash and action sequence with the skill of Cameron, and no one made it look cooler than Arnold Schwarzenegger.
When it’s roaring with its action sequences, True Lies is a ton of fun, peppered with humor and excitement. But those action sequences occur within the first 45 minutes of the movie and the final half-hour. The middle stretch is dominated by a domestic comedy that might be interesting if it weren’t so misogynistic.
Does True Lies hate women?
There is an interesting idea baked into True Lies’ premise concerning the effects of duplicity on a marriage, not to mention the commentary worth exploring about one member of a marriage having all the fun while the spouse is left bored in suburbia.
And the idea of Helen agreeing to help a man who’s obviously just trying to get her into bed isn’t bad. Paxton is wonderfully pathetic as a car salesman who convinces women he’s a secret agent – including inadvertently stealing credit for Harry’s adventures; he hams it up and is a joy to watch. And Jamie Lee Curtis plays Helen as such a meek and bored woman that we really believe she just truly wants to help because she’s bored with her life. There’s an interesting idea about how a life of intrigue could spice up Helen and Harry’s marriage.
Instead, the film spins an extended gag about punishing Helen for even talking to the guy – it’s made very clear that she never even entertained any sexual thoughts. Harry and his partner misuse government funds to raid the slimeball’s trailer – which might be funny, since Paxton’s character is nothing but a cartoon, except for the very real terror and violence inflicted on Helen. Helen is then put in an interrogation room where Harry and his partner grill her mercilessly about her intentions and her feelings for her husband. And then, even when it’s clear Helen was acting honorably and is still in love with her husband, they decide to play another prank and convince her to go to a hotel and do a striptease for a man she believes is a wanted criminal; but it’s really Schwarzenegger sitting in the shadows.
When the film was released, I remember reporting around this scene framing it as an empowering moment for Curtis, willing to show some skin at the “ancient” age of 36 (!). And listen, Curtis is good in the movie; she’s usually good. But the context of the scene is so humiliating and gross that it curdles more as the seconds tick by. Maybe you could pull this off if Harry and his pals were depicted as clueless morons and Helen was outsmarting them — Anchorman made a full movie out of this. But Schwarzenegger is in pure action hero mode and we’re supposed to chuckle at him pulling one over on his wife for…what, exactly? Being bored? Believing she was married to a computer salesman? If the point of the film was that Harry and Helen’s marriage could be spiced up by drawing her into the spy game, there are much better ways to depict that (and, indeed, the film’s last 30 minutes handles that better than this belabored plot thread). It’s an ugly, mean-spirited storyline, and it dominates a third of the movie. Just a week after Forrest Gump, America got another movie punishing women for wanting to do anything more than stay home and raise babies.
It might go down a bit easier if the film didn’t seem to have a chip on its shoulder about women throughout. The word “bitch” is casually tossed around by the male leads throughout the film, and shortly after Tia Carrere’s character is introduced, the film spends a great deal of time watching the main villain smack her around. Her character is also revealed to be evil, and the film’s way of solving that is a cat fight in the back of a limo in the film’s climax. Couple that with the casual depiction of pretty much every Arab character in the movie as a two-dimensional terrorist – and giving the film’s villain a lengthy sequence in which he gets bounced around a pain and slammed in the crotch – and the film’s sexual and racial politics turn the movie into a bit of a slog.
It might seem like I’m nitpicking dated attitudes. But if you haven’t seen True Lies in awhile, it’s easy to forget how much of the film is dedicated to the storyline of Harry humiliating Helen. In fact, I’d argue that the terrorism angle is tangential to the rest of the movie – this is the core story and emotional center of the film. James Cameron was apparently going through one of his divorces at this point – and it’s probably worth reminding that with Aliens, Terminator 2 and Titanic, he crafted genuinely good female characters – and this reads as a log of anger being blown off. Schwarzenegger also had his problems with women and Tom Arnold…well, his marital woes are the stuff of Hollywood legend. This is an action movie helmed by an Old Boys’ Club, and the fact that no one stepped in to course correct ruins what could have been an action classic.
True Lies has its moments – again, the action sequences that bookend it are fantastic. It’s a shame it couldn’t find something to do other than hate on women in its core. I would have loved for this to be one I regularly revisited.