#41 — True Lies
This is an illustrated countdown of my 49 1/2 most essential action movies, which means a picture and lots of words explaining myself for the ranking. Last week I talked about my favorite tournament film, Bloodsport.
Some action stars have benefited from a remarkable longevity, spacing out classics between multiple decades and eras. Arnold’s action hits came rolling out like a foot tall serving of pancakes, dense and unrelenting. It’s an incredible run. If you were to eat them all at once, you might die of joy. If you pace yourself, you could reach the bottom, only to find something like “The Running Man” looking nice and scrumptious. Oh, my tummy! Waiter, I’m gonna need a box.
True Lies is not at the top of the pile, but it’s definitely on that first plate. It’s big screen sit-com silliness. It’s also an industrial strength analog action movie with all the pyrotechnics Leave It To Beaver could only dream of. Lots of practical fx and cinematic polish to deliver a farcical story of marital decay and distrust. Lots of contradictions. Lots of true lies. Listen folks, there’s layers to this. Hey, you know what else is like a true lie? Movies. Just some food for thought.
As great as the action is here — and I’ll get to that, because it’s great — there’s a lot of other things I once dismissed as middling comedic fluff. I see it a little differently now. Jaime Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger glue this experience together in very different ways. She’s bringing a wince inducing realness to a character living on a foundation of quicksand. It’s an MVP performance. He’s bringing a laughably out-of-place action persona to a character as phony as his alibi. It’s Conan the Barbarian masquerading as Ward Cleaver, moonlighting as James Bond. “I love the computer business!” It’s just the right kind of absurdity that only Arnold can bring to something. I think James Cameron demonstrates his understanding of this with every comedic zoom-in on his face.
True Lies also has some warts. I don’t want to get all MovieGuide on you while I tally counts of Middle Eastern stereotypes, or women casually being called “bitch”, but I have to acknowledge it. It’s not that Harry Tasker doesn’t feel the heat for his double life, but Helen gets it so much worse, having done nothing to deserve it. Harry goes full Truman Show in his secret interrogation of her — and yet Jaime Lee Curtis is so good here that she salvages one of the most offensive things in the movie. I feel like there’s gotta be a better way to resolve this situation that isn’t a complete betrayal of marriage vows, and a waste of my tax payer dollars (And how is Harry going to explain that broken mirror in the interrogation room?)
She pours her heart out about not wanting to rot in the mundanity of spousal servitude, and he obliges by coercing her into a spy mission. I guess I could be perturbed by this, but they also share a beautiful kiss in front of a nuclear blast. Whatever kind of role-play this is seems to have worked. There’s also things like a Harrier jet firing a rocket with a man attached to it, causing him to lose his job as a terrorist (his rocket hits a helicopter full of other terrorists, who also get “fired”). So you’ve got some good and you’ve got some bad, and you can’t really compartmentalize them and pretend that everything is fine. It’s like trying to keep your gravy from spilling into the veggies. Life is like that. Whoever told you it was like a box of neatly arranged and labeled chocolates wrapped in individual paper sleeves was a total moron. Somebody shoot that guy.
What’s definitely good — without reservations — are the action scenes. Of course they’re over the top, but in a way that really draws you in. I don’t want to be the guy that puts one thing down to prop another up, but I can’t help doing a little comparison. Mission Impossible: Fallout gave us a wonderfully choreographed bathroom brawl, but it lacks the grimy, textured destruction of True Lies. Light fixtures spark and hang from the ceiling, urinals and hand dryers are smashed, water sprays everywhere, loose tiles fly off the walls. It feels lifted from a John Woo film. Then it segues into a horse/motorcycle chase that surely inspired John Wick 3, but is lasts longer, and even includes a ride in an elevator — which plays like an intermission. You’ve even got the classic spray-and-pray gun gag, which is filmed with enough care to make you forget it’s a cheap throwaway joke typically reserved for mediocrities like “Knight and Day”. I didn’t even mention the incredible bridge scene! I don’t want to embarrass MI:3’s Kid’s Meal version, so I won’t go into detail.
I think this is Arnold’s last truly great action film, marking the career of a man that convinced many of us to play along with far-fetched characters and stories through goofy charm and sheer force of will — a real life true lie. It’s also a broken poem of excess and well-intentioned, but poorly scribbled dissections of American culture. You can laugh at it, gawk at it, or perhaps be turned off by it, but I don’t see how this doesn’t get some kind of a reaction out of people. It’s one of the most impressively crafted action comedies ever. You don’t have to like True Lies, but I think you have to see it.
