July 15, 1994
I already reviewed TRUE LIES back in 2007, so I considered skipping it in this series. But it was a big hit (knocked FORREST GUMP out of the #1 slot for a week, became third highest grosser of the year), and such a straight up summer blockbuster, that it seems like it needs to be addressed. And I thought some people would be disappointed if I didn’t include it. But if you’re one of the many who consider it an action classic you might wish I abstained.
My arc with TRUE LIES goes like this: at the time I was hugely disappointed. It was an impressive action spectacle but it struck me as painfully racist and misogynistic. That wasn’t unheard of in those days, and I had a kneejerk revulsion to anything that seemed jingoistic or militaristic, so there were many beloved ‘90s hits that I watched feeling like the guy who didn’t belong at the rally. But I took TRUE LIES as a real betrayal from Cameron, who I admired so much for what he did with Ripley in ALIENS and Sarah Connor in T2, and whose TERMINATOR movies warned of out of control worship of military hardware. Now his big achievement was being the first guy allowed to film a particular war plane he thought was awesome.
When I finally revisited it for that review I still felt frustrated with all that stuff, but maybe a little more forgiving. I had some success letting things go and enjoying it on an action level. But I don’t know. Watching it now I still can’t say I like it. No, it’s not trying to be anything deep. The corny premise (taken from a French farce) is just a set up for some jokes and some action, and unlike any other movie in Cameron’s filmography it means to be lightweight, breezy entertainment. But it has so many undercurrents that leave a bad taste in my mouth that it’s hard to just smile and enjoy the ride.
Arnold Schwarzenegger (between LAST ACTION HERO and JUNIOR) is honestly great as Harry Tasker, secret agent on the trail of nuke-seeking “Crimson Jihad” terrorists. I want to love this character. He gets to do a suave tuxedo James Bond thing in the opening, but with Arnold type action of blowing people away, smashing people, sometimes saying his ridiculous one-liners (the climactic “You’re fired” is obviously the best thing in the movie). And I still love his politeness, the way he’s always apologizing to people inconvenienced by his action scenes, especially in the excellent horse vs. motorcycle chase.
But to me he represents this really retrograde view of married life that, at this age, bothers me more than any of the other stuff. It’s based in the comical premise that he lives a life of danger and thrills but has to keep it secret even from his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis between MY GIRL 2 and HOUSE ARREST), and as a result she thinks he’s a boring nerd and is unfulfilled. It works as a metaphor – at the beginning their marriage lacks the necessary communication and honesty, and at the end they share their passions (by being spies together) and are much happier. But on the literal level the story depresses me because it’s this old idea that husband and wife spend their days at dull office jobs and their nights ignoring each other and don’t really have any bond or spark unless some kind of “adventure” (of a type that will never happen to us) happens to fall into their laps.
Tom Arnold’s Gib fills the familiar ’80s/‘90s archetype of the buddy from work who makes sexist jokes all the time. You’re supposed to laugh at his comments but think “oh, you rascal” and know that our hero isn’t like that. We saw this earlier in the summer with Larry Miller’s character in DREAM LOVER, but he turned out to be the bad guy [update: or maybe he was a red herring, I’ve already forgotten]! Gib is more uptight about operations than Harry, so he’s less comfortable using all the resources of a national security apparatus for a private grudge. But he does it, and together they indulge in the exact type of machismo that Cameron so handily dismantled in ALIENS. Bill Paxton (between FUTURE SHOCK and APOLLO 13) is so funny as the slimy weasel used car salesman who tries to seduce Helen by pretending to live a life coincidentally like Harry’s actual one, but the way he’s defeated is by being scared into peeing his pants (twice) and admitting he has a small penis. Hudson would’ve loved that shit.
I don’t want to restart the debate about how bad or not bad it is to have one-dimensional cartoon Arab terrorists as the bad guys. What seems almost more relevant now is that being such stereotypes makes them boring, flavorless villains, exactly as forgettable as the interchangeable leather jacket Euro-gangsters in the worst Steven Seagal DTV movies. The most memorable scene for main villain Aziz (Art Malik, THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS) is when he slaps his accomplice Juno (Tia Carrere, SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO, HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN) really hard so the hero won’t be the only one seen treating women horribly. She’s more interesting than him, but stuck with the sidekick role.
The least forgivable section of the movie was always pretty infamous, or at least divisive. Believing Helen is cheating with Simon (when really she’s just suckered into helping him), Harry has her kidnapped by the agency, interrogates her using a voice distorter, torments her so much she cries and slams a stool against the one-way mirror. Then (shocking even Gib) he makes her believe she’ll go to prison if she doesn’t go undercover as a prostitute and do a strip tease for a client (actually him, but she doesn’t know it).
I should mention that Mrs. Vern had never seen TRUE LIES and was curious to watch it with me. She hadn’t commented much, but a few minutes into this scene said, “I don’t like this!” It was kind of uncomfortable to watch it with her, but not nearly as much as the first time I saw it when it was a sold out showing and the stranger in the seat next to me was literally drooling and giggling with delight. I remember Curtis being praised for looking great and having the guts to do it (deserved), but it continues to bother me that it’s presented as fun hotness despite the context. I’m glad she broke something over Harry’s head for this, but she should’ve divorced him without mercy, there should’ve been congressional hearings, Harry and Gib should’ve done time.
The more the movie throws this kind of sordid shit at me the less forgiving I get about its smaller faults, like its structure as an action movie. To me the best action is the horse chase and the bathroom fight. The helicopter chase over the bridge is also great and the excellent stuntwork holds up, so it makes a good climax. And I do remember the Harrier vs. building sequence seeming really impressive at the time, but I don’t think it holds up so well. I guess it was logical to make it personal by having their daughter (Eliza Dushku, THIS BOY’S LIFE) taken hostage, but to me it’s the only James Cameron fake out ending that makes me wonder if it should’ve been the real ending. For me it doesn’t earn the 2 hours and 21 minute runtime, but to be fair, anyone who’s more into it than me probly appreciates it.
Sorry to bring up an extra dark note but usually when a movie has action this great I try to mention whoever’s listed as stunt coordinator or action director and what some of their other credits are. I won’t do that here because in 2018 Eliza Dushku, who was 12 years old when she made the movie, alleged in detail how the stunt coordinator lured her to his hotel room and sexually assaulted her. She fortunately told adults what happened, but calls it “no small coincidence” that right after one of them confronted him, a stunt on the Harrier went wrong and she broke her ribs.
It clearly wasn’t properly addressed at the time, because the perpetrator wasn’t fired or prosecuted, and continued to work for decades, including on some movies I like. Dushku said she was prompted to finally speak up by the combination of the #MeToo movement and seeing a recent photo of him with his arm around a young woman. After her post (and a very unconvincing denial) he was finally dropped by his agency and stopped working.
One of the many creepy details Dushku mentions is that the guy paid special attention to her and openly called her the nickname “Jailbait” on set. She remembers having to ask her older brother what it meant, and now wonders how no adults thought that was weird enough to intervene. I don’t believe there’s a connection between the attitudes toward women in the movie and the failures that allowed that guy to get away with that for so long, except that they both come from the same sickness in society. Dushku’s story is a reminder to put your foot down as soon as you see that shit. So fuck you Gib, I don’t think your “Women, can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em” line is cute.
I can’t frame this as a question of whether or not TRUE LIES holds up, or is dated. All of the things that are fucked up about it were already fucked up at the time. And as you know I often enjoy period-specific references that make a movie act as a time capsule. In this case those are: Gib saying that kids’ only role models these days are Axl Rose and Madonna, Gib referencing the daytime talk show host Sally Jesse Raphael, and Harry referring to two guys as Beavis and Butthead.
It’s kind of crazy to think about the fact that TRUE LIES was 30 years ago and Cameron has only directed three movies since. One is a period piece and the other two are in the future, so the only James Cameron depictions of contemporary life are contained to a 12 year period in the ‘80s and ‘90s. If he ever does it again it will seem like a weird new James Cameron, I bet. So far this one doesn’t make me think “Damn, they don’t make movies that look like that anymore!” like his earlier ones do, but I suppose that could change with time.
Considering the filmography, it’s not too much of an insult to say it, but TRUE LIES is definitely in the bottom two James Cameron directorial works. I’m pretty sure it’s in last place for me, because I enjoyed PIRANHA PART TWO: THE SPAWNING for what it was, but I don’t remember it well enough to make a definitive comparison. I just think it’s a movie that does something cool with limited means, while this uses enormous resources for something ugly.
But you know what? He hasn’t repeated those things. When the woman strips for the man in TITANIC it’s her idea, and it became an all-timer steamy PG-13 scene. AVATAR has action and romance without any women having to be humiliated. When villains have been needed, so far, Cameron has turned his aim at a sci-fi version of western colonial powers. (Or a possessive Wall Street douche with no appreciation for modern art.) So I don’t hold TRUE LIES against him. I’m just not buying the blu-ray now that it finally exists.
July 18th, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Agreed on all counts. I watched this a few weeks ago, possibly for the first time from start to finish, and found the whole thing distasteful. The action is decent, though not up to par with T2, and Arnold doing a Bond riff is fun for a while. Jamie Lee Curtis does look great and has some excellent physical acting in this, especially the comedic bits, but the whole premise is too skeevy for me. Harry wields the full unchecked power of the state to stalk and torture his wife, and it’s supposed to be funny. Tom Arnold’s character sexualizes Harry’s 14 year old daughter, who was played by a 12 year old actress being molested by the stunt coordinator, and it’s supposed to be funny. Gross.
As legend goes, Cameron and Schwarzenegger got into an argument on set and Cameron purportedly yelled “Do you want Paul Verhoeven to finish this motherfucker?” That got me thinking about what a Verhoeven version would look like. I think you could barely change the script, and somehow it would take on a new level of meaning. Rather than an angry farce from a recently divorced man, we’d get a satire of American masculinity and imperialism in mid-life crisis.