True Lies (1994, James Cameron) (Patreon)

40/100

Second viewing, last seen on opening day of its original theatrical release. I can't honestly remember whether its rampant racism and uncharacteristic sexism put me off at the time, or whether I was heavily influenced by a friend's vitriolic email rant a few weeks later; either way, True Lies has always been my least favorite Cameron film, albeit with an asterisk*. The whole "Arabs—aren't they the worst?" thing can perhaps be shrugged off as standard 20th-century Hollywood grotesquerie when it comes to bad guys, but it was hard, even three decades ago, to defend Harry's concurrent abuse of his wife and our national-security apparatus in a coerced-striptease setpiece that we're meant to find lightly amusing rather than deeply disturbing. Gib mutters that he's gonna go to hell for his part in setting up the ruse, but that's the extent of this movie's self-interrogation; Cameron has zero interest in any sort of moral reckoning and so quickly sends terrorists into the room, facilitating Harry's redemption via numerous acts of manliness while Helen accidentally kills a dozen baddies by dropping a MAC-10 submachine gun down a flight of stairs. (The reaction shots of Jamie Lee Curtis waving her hands uselessly in the air while making frantic gibbering noises are just painfully mortifying. Hard to believe this is the director who gave us The Terminator's Sarah Connor, much less Terminator 2's Sarah Connor.) One might argue that nobody wants to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger wrestle with his conscience, but that only raises the question of why a musclebound behemoth was cast in the role of a spy whose wife and teenage daughter (Eliza Dushku hadn't yet figured out how to be compellingly obnoxious) think he's a mild-mannered computer salesman. Harry Tasker should look outwardly unprepossessing, not like...well, like Mr. Universe. Instead of gaping at the revelation that he's a superspy, Helen and Dana should have been gaping every day that he set out with his briefcase to his ostensible dull job.

Apologists for the film acknowledge that it's frequently kinda gross, but are nonetheless excited by the sheer spectacular Cameron-ness of it all. Can't even really say that I see that, frankly. Opening sequence tries for ersatz Bond, gets weighted down by Arnold's lumbering gracelessness—again, he's not even remotely the right actor, except insofar as his presence in the ads and trailers would lure people into seats. Cameron's genius in the original Terminator was understanding how to use Schwarzenegger to best advantage; trying to make him Cary Grant by way of Sean Connery was doomed to failure. We then get a lengthy chase that sees Harry charge through a hotel on horseback, in which I guess it's supposed to be a hoot that he keeps telling people "Sorry" and "Excuse me." When Helen finally enters the story (which takes a good 40 minutes), we get a big chunk of time that's just about humiliating Bill Paxton's sleazeball, which Cameron enjoys so much that he gives us a reprise at the very end (complete with another pants-pissing). And I can't distinguish the climactic Harrier jet rescue—props to the aforementioned friend for pointing out that the phallic jet is our protagonist, only more so, even Harry-er—from the bombastic wanton violence that folks like McTiernan and Cosmatos were serving up at that time. Cameron's forte is tense implacability, not just blowing shit up real good; he needs a seemingly unstoppable killing machine (T-800, T-1000, alien queen, iceberg) and doesn't know what to do with a bunch of gun-wielding terrorists. True Lies might be the only action movie I've ever seen in which the countdown to a nuclear detonation becomes almost irrelevant (and the detonation itself gets employed as a cutesy visual gag). 

Maybe that's the real problem. True Lies is trying to be an action-comedy; Cameron can't do funny (though I laughed at the perfect dry spin that Grant Heslov places on "They call him the Sand Spider." "Why?" "Probably because it sounds scary"), especially in a context that's much more creepy than funny to begin with. Haven't seen La Totale!, so can't say whether the original film better managed that tonal dissonance...but odds are its hero doesn't deliver such tired Schwarzneggerian witticisms as "Cool off" (dunking bad guy into urinal) and "You're fired" (sending Big Bad into helicopter on guided missile). Et tu, Jim? Oh, and had someone shown me, a week ago, the truck teetering on the destroyed bridge, its occupants seemingly safe for a moment but then sent over the edge to their doom by a pelican landing on its hood, and had they asked me who directed that, I don't know that 50 guesses would have been sufficient. The whole thing seems misbegotten, though I can imagine an alternate version, starring a different actor, that tackles marital discord with enough razor-sharp candor to make me queasily fascinated rather than just wearily disgusted. It would not have grossed anything like $400 million. Maybe $4 million.

 * I've never seen Piranha II.