By Robert Scucci
| Published
I’m at the point in my life where I’m revisiting movies that I haven’t seen since I was a kid who probably shouldn’t have been watching R-rated fare like True Lies when it was originally released for home viewing. Watching True Lies for the first time as an adult, I had only a vague recollection of what actually happened in the film, but have fond memories of watching over-the-top action movies with my dad and having my six-year-old face blown off by the subwoofer we had in the family room.
Now on the wrong side of my 30s and sporting a pair of serious studio cans for all of my action movie needs, I can say with confidence that True Lies is everything I thought it would be and more because it’s loud, excessive, and jam-packed with so much action that I now understand why Bill Paxton’s character soils himself when the going gets tough.
The Secret Life Of Harry Tasker
True Lies centers on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Harry Tasker, a secret agent working in counterterrorism for an agency known as Omega Sector unbeknownst to his wife and daughter, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Dana (Eliza Dushku), who think he makes his living selling computer hardware.
Frequently missing out on family events due to the nature of his work, Harry finds himself at odds with Helen, who more often than not is disappointed with how much he prioritizes his professional life over his family life. So much, in fact, that she starts secretly seeing a man named Simon (Bill Paxton), who works as a used car salesman but pretends to be a spy so he could pick up women.
It’s A Family Affair
Learning that Helen is looking for thrills in life, Harry uses Omega Sector resources with the help of his teammate Albert “Gib” Gibson (Tom Arnold), to convince her to go on a fake mission, which sets the rest of True Lies’ plot in motion.
Completely unaware of the true nature of Harry’s work, Helen gets caught in the middle of an elaborate nuclear conspiracy spearheaded by a terrorist organization known as “Crimson Jihad,” led by Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik).
Having to come clean about what he does professionally, Harry finds himself racing the clock in True Lies in order to ensure not only his own safety, but the safety of his wife, daughter, and the United States, as Salim Abu Aziz plans to detonate nuclear warheads in major cities on a weekly basis if the US government doesn’t fulfill his demand of removing their presence from the Persian Gulf.
Boasting an excessive amount of explosions and gunplay, True Lies is relentless in its delivery of intense action sequences, which are offset by its sense of humor thanks to the on-screen chemistry between a cocksure Arnold Schwarzenegger and a way in over her head Jamie Lee Curtis. Across its 141 minute runtime, you’ll find no shortage of cinematic carnage that’s as egregious as it is glorious, and you have to give credit to James Cameron for pulling no stops in creating some of the best action sequences that 1993 money could buy.
At least for my money, if I’m going to watch an action movie, there better be a healthy amount of helicopter maneuvers, flamethrowers, bombs blowing off in the distance, and, in the case of True Lies, an over-the-top horse chase that causes a significant amount of collateral damage.
In my mind, True Lies is the epitome of 90s action movie excess, and it’s hard for me to watch films like this critically because the name of the game is suspending disbelief and enjoying the show.
Comically over-the-top in every conceivable way, you can stream True Lies with an active Hulu subscription as of this writing.
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