True Lies (1994)
True Lies is a 1994 American spy action comedy film written and directed by James Cameron. It was executive produced by Lawrence Kasanoff and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Art Malik, Tia Carrere, Bill Paxton, Eliza Dushku, Grant Heslov and Charlton Heston. It is based on the 1991 French comedy film La Totale! The film follows U.S. government agent Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger), who struggles to balance his double life as a spy with his familial duties. True Lies was the first Lightstorm Entertainment project to be distributed under Cameron’s multimillion-dollar production deal with 20th Century Fox,
as well as the first major production for the visual effects company Digital Domain, which was co-founded by Cameron. It was also the first film to cost $100 million.
For her performance, Curtis won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Saturn Award for Best Actress, while Cameron won the Saturn Award for Best Director. The film ultimately grossed $378 million worldwide at the box-office, becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 1994, behind The Lion King and Forrest Gump. It was also nominated at the Academy Awards and BAFTAs in the Best Visual Effects category, and also for seven Saturn Awards.
Plot.
Harry Tasker leads a double life: to his legal secretary wife Helen and his rebellious daughter Dana, he is a boring computer salesman often away on business trips, while in actuality he is a secret agent for a U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence agency named Omega Sector. Harry, along with fellow Agents Albert “Gib” Gibson and Faisil, infiltrate a party in Switzerland hosted by billionaire Jamal Khaled, where Harry meets beautiful art dealer Juno Skinner. Eventually they learn that Juno is not only Khaled’s art dealer, but that she is being paid by an Islamic terrorism group called “Crimson Jihad”, led by Salim Abu Aziz. Harry visits her undercover as a potential buyer to learn more, leading Aziz and his men to attempt to kill him. Harry fights them off, but loses Aziz in pursuit. As a result, he misses the birthday party that his wife and daughter had planned for him. Harry goes to Helen’s office the next day to smooth things over and surprise her for lunch, but overhears her making secret arrangements to meet a man named Simon.RELATED:
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Suspecting Helen is having an affair, he uses Omega Sector resources to learn that Simon is a used car salesman who pretends to be a covert agent to flirt with women. In disguise, Harry and other Omega agents kidnap Helen and Simon. After terrifying Simon into keeping away from Helen, Harry and Gib interrogate Helen using a voice masking device and learn that she is desperately seeking adventure because of Harry’s constant absences. Harry thus arranges for Helen to participate in a staged spy mission, where she is to seduce a mysterious figure (who is actually Harry himself) and plant a bug in his hotel room. Aziz’s men suddenly burst in, kidnap the couple, and take them to an island in the Florida Keys.
On the island, Harry’s suspicions about Juno are confirmed: Crimson Jihad paid her to help them smuggle four stolen MIRV nuclear warheads into the country by hiding them in priceless antique statues. Aziz demands that the United States remove all U.S. military forces from the Persian Gulf forever or else he will
detonate a warhead each week in a major U.S. city. He also says he will detonate one warhead on the uninhabited island to demonstrate that Crimson Jihad is a nuclear power. Before he and Helen are tortured, Harry is administered a truth serum and confesses his double life to Helen. They escape to watch as one warhead is set to explode in 90 minutes and the others are loaded onto vehicles to be taken into the U.S. via the Overseas Highway, thus bypassing U.S. Customs. Harry and Helen get separated in the ensuing melee where Harry kills most of the terrorists, but Aziz gets away with one of the warheads. Helen is caught by Juno and taken in a limousine following the convoy. Gib and other Omega agents pick up Harry and they use two Marine Harrier Jump Jets to stop the convoy by destroying part of the Seven Mile Bridge. Harry rescues Helen from Juno’s limo before it careens into the ocean below, killing Juno.
Production.
Arnold Schwarzenegger stated that while filming a scene with a horse, a camera boom hit the horse and “it went crazy, spinning and rearing” near a drop of 90 feet. Schwarzenegger quickly slid off the horse and stuntman Billy D. Lucas (who was one of Arnold’s main doubles and closest friends) caught him; he concluded, “[this is] why I will always love stunt people”. Costing $100 –120 million to produce, True Lies was the first film with a production budget of over $100 million. It was filmed over a seven-month schedule. Eliza Dushku stated that while filming True Lies at the age of twelve, she was sexually molested by the film’s stunt coordinator, Joel Kramer.RELATED:
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Box office.
True Lies was a box-office success. Opening in 2,368 theaters in the United States and Canada, it ranked number one at the US box office in its opening weekend, grossing $25,869,770 and beating Forrest Gump. It was the number one film in Japan for twelve straight weeks. It went on to gross $146,282,411 in the United States and Canada and $232,600,000 in the rest of world, totaling $378,882,411 worldwide, making it the third highest-grossing movie of 1994.
Critical reception.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 70% based on 53 reviews, and an average score of 6.60/10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “If it doesn’t reach the heights of director James Cameron’s and star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s previous collaborations, True Lies still packs enough action and humor into its sometimes absurd plot to entertain”. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A” on an A+ to F scale.
Home media.
True Lies was released on VHS and Laserdisc after its theatrical release, and on DVD on May 25, 1999. A high definition version was released on D-Theater in 2003. The film is currently unavailable for digital purchase. In 2018, James Cameron stated that a new transfer for Blu-ray has been completed, but he hasn’t found time to review it.
Television.
In September 2010, multiple websites reported Cameron developing True Lies as a possible television series with Dark Angel producer René Echevarria serving as showrunner and producer. In 2017, Fox planned to do a pilot of the series, with Marc Guggenheim as screenwriter, McG as executive producer and possible director. In May 2019, McG announced while as a guest on Collider Live that the film will receive a television series on Disney+. On February 10, 2021, CBS announced a pilot order for the second attempt at a True Lies series adaptation. Matt Nix will write the pilot and produce with Josh Levy via Flying Glass of Milk Productions. James Cameron, director of the film, will executive produce with Rae Sanchini through Lightstorm Entertainment.RELATED:
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Mary Viola of Wonderland Sound and Vision will also executive produce, with Corey Marsh of Wonderland co-executive producing. McG is set to direct the pilot and executive produce via Wonderland. In March 2021, CBS moved the pilot “off cycle” to give the series producers more time to film the pilot later in the year.
By May 2022, Anthony Hemingway replaced McG as the director of the pilot and subsequent episodes, via Anthony Hemingway Productions, to air by the 2022–23 broadcast season at CBS.
Cast:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger as Harry Tasker
- Jamie Lee Curtis as Helen Tasker
- Tom Arnold as Albert “Gib” Gibson
- Art Malik as Salim Abu Aziz
- Bill Paxton as Simon
- Tia Carrere as Juno Skinner
- Eliza Dushku as Dana Tasker
- Grant Heslov as Faisil
- Charlton Heston as Spencer Trilby
- Marshall Manesh as Jamal Khaled
- James Allen as Colonel
- Ofer Samra as Yusef