A fearless, globe-trotting, terrorist-battling secret agent has his life turned upside down when he discovers his wife might be having an affair with a used-car salesman while terrorists smuggle nuclear warheads into the United States.
After Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1993 box office dud, “Last Action Hero,” he returned firing on all cylinders in James Cameron’s “True Lies,” a James Bond homage that gave the Bond producers pause for thought upon its release in 1994. Since the last Bond film, “Licence to Kill,” had been released in 1989, the world held its breath in anticipation of the super spy’s return – which would be “Goldeneye” one year later – but Cameron and Schwarzenegger’s movie upped the ante regarding spy films and blew audiences away after grossing almost $379,000 worldwide.
To his wife, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), and daughter, Dana (Eliza Dushku), Harry Tasker is a boring salesman who works for a business software company. In real life, Harry is a secret agent for Omega Sector, a top-secret U.S. counterterrorism agency. After a successful mission in Switzerland, Harry and his two partners, Gib (Tom Arnold) and Faisil (Grant Heslov), secure top-secret files from a billionaire’s computer and safely return to the U.S.
Picking up on a lead from their newly discovered information, they become aware of a terrorist faction called “Crimson Jihad,” led by an extremist, Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik), who is hellbent on destroying America and is planning something big. At the same time, Harry learns that Helen is having an affair with a mystery man named Simon (Bill Paxton). Following her every move, Harry and his team extract them from his house, hiding their identity as they go.
Helen is confined to a room with large one-way windows that Harry and Gib sit behind, talking to her using a voice masking device. When they learn that Helen was never intimate with Simon but is going through a midlife crisis and just wants a little excitement in her boring life, Harry gives her a staged spy mission to make her way to a hotel and plant a bug in the room of a mysterious figure – the figure being him – but before she can carry out her mission, Aziz and his men capture them both and kidnap them to an island in the Florida Keys. There, Aziz shows Harry he has four nuclear warheads and plans on detonating one every week in a major U.S. city unless America removes its forces from the Persian Gulf. Now Harry must figure out how to save the day and his marriage.
Schwarzenegger and Cameron’s two previous team-ups, “The Terminator” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” were huge critical and box office smashes, so it was a no-brainer that “True Lies” would be another big hit. And it was. So much so that for years after, Arnie, Cameron, Tom Arnold, and Jamie Lee Curtis were all ready to come back for “True Lies 2” but when 9/11 happened in 2001, it changed the landscape of filmmaking in Hollywood and never got made. Movies about terrorism in general decreased, but in more recent years, TV shows like “24,” “Jack Ryan,” and “Homeland,” and movies like “Olympus Has Fallen,” “The Sum of All Fears,” and “Unthinkable,” haven’t been afraid to put terrorism back in the spotlight. So, will we finally see “True Lies 2”? Unlikely, but while CBS produced a TV show based on the movie, it was canceled due to low ratings.
Cameron has always excelled in the action arena, and here is no different. One scene has Harry on horseback chasing Aziz on a motorcycle and a rooftop jump that has to be seen to be believed. While the movie is filled with explosions and fights galore, the camaraderie between the central characters elevates it high above Cameron’s signature action sequences. Both Harry and Helen have drifted apart over the years, passing each other like ships in the night, but when they both get entangled in the terrorist plot, they realize they must work together, and in doing so, it revitalizes their marriage and desires for each other.
Tom Arnold is Harry’s partner and best friend, and his sense of comic timing is impeccable. Arnie’s straight-laced hero and Arnold’s wisecracking sidekick make for a great combination; I just wish they had gotten around to doing a second film and maybe even a third. While movies about terrorism are back in vogue, so to speak, Arnold is now pushing 77, so his Harry Tasker would more than likely be retired, the same for Tom Arnold, now almost 65, and Jamie Lee Curtis, 66. Films about aging action heroes, including next year’s “Lethal Weapon 5,” and the four “Expendables” movies, three of which included Schwarzenegger, prove that there is a market out there for those kinds of films, but with Cameron busy working on “Avatar 3, 4, and 5” over the next few years, I doubt we’ll ever get to see it. It may be remade at some point, but the original actors are out of the picture.
If you have not seen “True Lies” yet, check it out, you’ll have a blast with one of Cameron’s best action vehicles to date. And you can never have too much Arnie and his signature one-liners, especially the last one in the film. You’ll know it when you hear it.
Now available on Digital 4K Ultra HD™ and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray™ disc March 12th
