Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading on several websites (that will remain anonymous as I wouldn’t want to give them traffic) where they have been tearing down the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic True Lies. This is apparently due to a scene in Captain Marvel where she shoots a cardboard standup of the movie which has Jamie Lee Curtis draped over Arnie’s shoulder.
So now we have all these pussies crawling out of the woodwork being all “woke” or whatever the bullshit term is now saying that True Lies is sexist and racist and all the usual bollocks thrown about these days for people to try and sound like their opinions matter.
I’ll admit that True Lies isn’t my favourite Arnie movie and it has its flaws (none of which were any of the reasons stated above); my main problems were that it was a little too long and the whole side story with Bill Paxton kills the pacing a little. I still enjoy that storyline though because we all know Bill Paxton rules and it has some hilarious dialogue like “Oh God, no, please don’t kill me. I’m not a spy. I’m nothing. I’m navel lint! I have to lie to women to get laid, and I don’t score much. I got a little dick, it’s pathetic!”
Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic as always and her transformation from bored housewife to ass kicking warrior woman is great fun to watch. I never found it to be sexist; Jamie Lee Curtis is no shrinking violet herself so if she considered it such she wouldn’t have starred in the movie so maybe people should stop trying to be offended for others and get a life.
Tia Carrere eats up the screen as the villainous Juno Skinner who has an epic punch up with Curtis in the action-packed finale as James Cameron knows how to do badass ladies without ramming it down our throats.
Arnie plays Harry Tasker (who is essentially James Bond) and gets to do some serious ass kicking, which is after all what he does best. My favourite scene is when he’s tied to the chair and he tells the bad guys how he is going to kill them and then proceeds to do exactly that. It’s classic Arnold but there are so many great set-pieces that it’s hard to pick just one; the horse chase through a building or the bathroom fight are also standout moments and there is some great stuntwork too.
Brad Fiedel’s score has a memorable theme tune although it’s obviously nowhere near as good as his Terminator scores; he’s retired now which is a damn shame as we never got enough music from him.
Tom Arnold provides the comic relief but rather than ruining the tone he has some good lines and has some witty banter with Faisil (Grant Heslov).
The movie itself is utterly ridiculous as any good action movie should be but there is sometimes the odd moment where you’ll say “that doesn’t work for me”. The plane scene at the end was always rather silly but on the flip side of that, it does give us one of the greatest bad guy deaths of all time: “You’re fired!”
Art Malik does play a stereotypical villain in Salim Abu Aziz and I remember at the time of the release there were protests at the way Arabs were portrayed in the film. He is a rather one note antagonist but he has great screen presence and this is an action movie after all where the majority of villains are portrayed that way. It doesn’t matter his race or where’s he’s from, he’s just the bad guy. People would be upset no matter where he was from because today people love to get offended about everything. I think the best way to deal with these types of people is four simple words – Shut the Fuck Up!
If you don’t like True Lies then I can understand that; like I said it’s far from perfect but this was a different era with over the top characters, outlandish set-pieces and yes, villains that just need killing… no matter where they were from. So stop trying to be offended by things that came out 24 years ago and grow up.
