Review of "True Lies"

Review of

True Lies


Five out of five stars



 This action thriller is one of my favorite Schwarzenegger movies, largely due to the backup roles by Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton and Jamie Lee Curtis. Schwarzenegger is a top level U. S. government agent/spy named Harry Tasker and Curtis is his wife Helen. To her, Harry is a boring computer salesman that is forced to be on the road for extended periods of time. Arnold is Harry’s spy sidekick and Paxton is a true used car salesman that pretends to be a spy in order to bed women. The villains are an organization of master terrorists that have managed to acquire nuclear weapons. They are well funded and determined to carry out their mission to punish the United States.

 Even though the plot is based on millions of lives being at stack, what makes the movie work is the dialog and sight gags. A furious and deadly fighter, Harry is overly polite to people that he must shove out of the way in order to accomplish his task. There is no better scene than when he chews out the horse that refuses to take a death-defying leap off a building. A close second is when he apologizes to a man on a toilet after being involved in shooting up the restroom and killing two terrorists.

 It is unfortunate that no sequel to this movie was ever made, for it is clear that if the same style of action and dialogue was repeated, it would have been like this one. A movie that you can never see too many times. A thriller with a silent laugh track.