True lies

Year of release : 1994

Run time : 2h21m

Genre : Action

Cast : Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Eliza Dushku, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Tia Carrere

Director : James Cameron

The movie is based on the 1991 French movie “ La totale!” which apparently is based on an unproduced 1981 Lucien Lambert screenplay “Emilie ”.

The movie opens with Harry and his team mates working a case in Switzerland. See, he is a spy, infiltrating a party hosted by a billionaire Iranian man. There, he approaches art dealer Juno Skinner, asking her to tango, to elude the guards who were aware someone infiltrated the party.

Impressed by how he danced, Juno gives him her business card. Harry makes his exit by blowing things up, as he was almost caught.

Getting home at night, his family, who think him a computer hardware salesman, is asleep.

In the morning, his team mate, Gib, introduces a new technology to him, a pair of glasses which transmit whatever the hidden camera (this time a pack of cigarettes) placed in the house, films. Through them he sees his daughter stealing money from Gib’s pocket. Talking about her, we see Harry doesn’t know much about his daughter, not even her age!

Harry’s boss, at the top secret counter terr0rism Omega Sector, thinks he “ really screwed the pooch” on that job. Harry and his team mates tell him they think billionaire Jamal Khalid is involved in terr0rism because he bought nuclear weapons, but the boss is not convinced.

Harry’s wife, Helen, is complaining to her co-worker about how Harry is acting like he saves the world, while he is just a sales rep.

Harry’s team finds out Juno is selling 2 million dollars worth of “antiques” to the billionaire, so Harry decides to pay her a visit.

After she screams at the men working inside her shop with the antiques for taking a break, one of them slaps her around for how she treated him, revealing he is the head of a terr0rist organization.

Helen is cooking for Harry’s birthday, and Harry, who is steaking Juno’s place is assuring her he will be home in time. Leaving the hotel, Gib notices they have a tail on them, and Harry decides to play the game. He puts on the sun glasses with a screen in them, using the hidden camera in the cigarette pack to see what the people who are following them are doing behind him. The men follow him into a hotel’s bathroom, trying to k1ll him, but Harry fights them all until they destroy the place. Harry does k1ll them, but he is chased by their leader, and eventually ends up chasing the leader on a horse!

Looking the man up, as he got away, driving his motorcycle off the hotel’s rooftop into another’s, they find out he is the leader of the “Crimson jihad” terr0rist organization.

The next day, Harry is trying to make up to Helen, by taking her out for lunch, but he walks in on her talking to her colleague about some guy she’s been talking to. So he ends up spying on her.

He realizes the guy she is talking to is pretending to be a spy, taking account for the things Harry actually does.

One night, when the guy is trying to make her leave with him to France, Harry makes his organization descend full force on the guy’s trailer, taking his wife into custody, asking her questions into a distorted voice about her relationship with the guy.

And end up telling her she has to work for the organization now, and answer whenever they call.

They call her the next evening, while Harry is at the dinner table, asking her to pose as a prostitute for a guy who likes to watch her strip.

While there, Harry poses as the said guy, and when he’s trying to approach her, she fights him, trying to make a get away, but the members of the terr0rist organization break into their room, taking them hostage.

It seems that Juno is the one in charge of this operation and is acting all bitchy, while Helen thinks that all this happens because of her, while Harry is trying to tell them it’s him who they want.

I enjoyed the movie. It’s action packed, beginning to end, in the old fashioned James Cameron style. The horse chase scene is pretty wild, as they ride though the hotel, and take an elevator to the rooftop.

The part with spying on the wife and making her believe they want to use her as a spy reminded me of the fan fiction books or movies.

Harry is an absent father and his kid is mildly acting out, by ignoring him. He is also an absent husband, who is about to lose his wife to a charlatan who likes to pretend he’s rich and strong, doing something important, which is exactly what he is, because he spends all of his time looking for, fighting and putting bad guys away, forgetting about what’s truly important.

I didn’t like the ending SPOILER as Helen becomes somehow a spy too, instead of him getting a desk job to spend more time with the family. So they learnt nothing. END OF SPOILER

The acting was good. Completely unrelated, Jamie Lee Curtis has a beautiful body!

The visual effects were good.

The movie received positive reviews from both critics and audiences alike, and grossed almost 379 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 100 million dollars.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie an A.

The movie was the 3d highest grossing movie of the year 1994.

Jamie Lee Curtis won a few awards for this role, including a Golden Globe, and a Saturn award, while James Cameron won a Saturn Best Director award.

The movie even has a video game released right after it in 1994.

You can watch the full movie on platforms like Dailymotion.

Rating : Worth a watch !