True Lies

UK Release Date. 12 August 1994
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 21 mins
Director. James Cameron
Cast. Tom Arnold, Tia Carrere, Jamie Lee Curtis, Art Malik, Bill Paxton, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Rating. 56%

Review.

James Cameron has always been one for the grandiose production. But after three arduous, gruelling and exhausting six-month shoots on Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the director apparently wanted to make a film that was light and undemanding. A film that would appeal to the Friday night Multiplex audience - crowd-pleasing popcorn fodder, if you like. True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, was the end result. 

True Lies opens with a spectacular series of James Bond-inspired action sequences, [this was a fallow period for James Bond, Licence To Kill was released in 1989, and Goldeneye wasn’t released until 1995], and ends with a listless progression to a more traditional (and formulaic) Schwarzenegger-style conclusion. In vogue at the time, these loud, brash and explosive-laden productions paved the way for a new wave of action genre filmmakers, the likes of Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich and Simon West.

Instead of the Soviet threats that were the staple of the action genre of the previous decade, Cameron selected a villain that reflected political anxieties at that time - a Middle Eastern threat. The film often resorts to gross stereotypes;  Art Malik's role (Salim Abu Aziz), in particular, becomes cartoonish in the climactic jet-fighter sequence. However, the monologue recorded on a camcorder plays with unsettling prescience in retrospect. Delivered eight years before the 2001 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ultimatum pronounced by Aziz now registers like so many videos produced by similar groups since.

Equally troublesome is the general air of misogyny in the film, particularly conveyed by Tom Arnold’s character, Albert Gibson. This from the director who had, to that point, provided us with some of the strongest women action heroes in film history - Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley and Lindsey Brigman.

Released in the summer of 1994, True Lies earned $379 million worldwide, making it the year's third highest-grossing film after The Lion King and Forrest Gump. Ultimately, there's a degree of escapist fun in Cameron’s signature brand of relentless action. But it is an empty experience. True Lies is, by far and away, the most disposable effort in terms of narrative and formal execution of any of Cameron's films, yet it still feels superior to many of its contemporaries from the 1990s.