| True Lies | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | James Cameron |
| Screenplay by | James Cameron |
| Based on | La Totale! byClaude Zidi Simon Michaël Didier Kaminka |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Russell Carpenter |
| Edited by | |
| Music by | Brad Fiedel |
Production company | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 141 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $100[2][3]–120[4] million |
| Box office | $378.9 million[5] |
True Lies is a 1994 Americanaction comedy film written and directed byJames Cameron, based on the 1991 Frenchcomedy filmLa Totale![4] The film starsArnold Schwarzenegger as Harry Tasker, aU.S. government agent, who struggles to balance his double life as a spy with his familial duties.Jamie Lee Curtis,Tom Arnold,Bill Paxton,Art Malik, andTia Carrere star in supporting roles.True Lies was the firstLightstorm Entertainment project to be distributed under Cameron's multimillion-dollar production deal with20th Century Fox, as well as the first major production for the visual effects companyDigital Domain, which was co-founded by Cameron. It was alsothe first film to cost $100 million.
True Lies received mostly positive reviews from critics, and ultimately grossed $378 million worldwide at the box office, becoming thethird-highest-grossing film of 1994.[6] For her performance, Curtis won theGolden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and theSaturn Award for Best Actress, while Cameron won theSaturn Award for Best Director. It was also nominated at theAcademy Awards andBAFTAs in the Best Visual Effects category, and also for sevenSaturn Awards.
To his wife Helen and his daughter Dana, Harry Tasker is a computer hardware salesman often away on business trips, but he is actually a secret agent for Omega Sector, a top-secretU.S.counterterrorism agency. Harry, along with his teammates Albert "Gib" Gibson and Faisil, infiltrates a party inSwitzerland hosted by billionaire Jamal Khaled. At the party, Harry meets Juno Skinner, who turns out to not only be Khaled's art dealer, but someone paid by "CrimsonJihad", a terrorist faction led by Salim Abu Aziz. Undercover as a potential buyer, Harry visits her, leading the terrorists to attempt to kill him. Harry fights them off but loses Aziz in a pursuit. As a result, Harry misses the birthday party that Helen and Dana planned for him.
The next day, Harry goes to Helen's office to reconcile with her, but instead overhears her secretly arranging to meet someone called Simon. Suspecting Helen is having an affair, Harry uses Omega Sector resources to learn that Simon is a used car salesman, who pretends to be a covert agent to seduce women. In disguise, Harry and other Omega agents arrest Helen and Simon. After terrifying Simon into keeping away from Helen, Harry and Gib interrogate her using a voice masking device in a secret facility. They learn she is suffering amidlife crisis and is desperately seeking adventure. Harry arranges for Helen to participate in a staged spy mission, where she is to seduce a mysterious figure (who is actually Harry) and plant abug in his hotel room.
However, Aziz's men burst in, kidnap the couple and take them to an island in theFlorida Keys. On the island, Harry learns Crimson Jihad paid Juno to help the group smuggle fourMIRVnuclear warheads by hiding them in antique statues. Aziz demands that the U.S. remove their forces from thePersian Gulf or he will weekly detonate a warhead in a major U.S. city. He will also detonate one warhead on the uninhabited island to demonstrate Crimson Jihad's resolve. Before being tortured with Helen, Harry is administered atruth serum and confesses his double life to her. They escape and learn that one warhead is set to explode in 90 minutes while the others are loaded onto vehicles to be taken into the U.S. via theOverseas Highway, thus bypassing U.S.Customs. In the ensuing melee, Harry and Helen kill many of the terrorists, while Aziz gets away with one of the warheads on a helicopter.
Helen is caught by Juno and taken in a limousine following the convoy. Gib and other Omega agents pick up Harry. They use twoMarineHarrier jump jets to intercept the convoy by destroying part of theSeven Mile Bridge. Harry rescues Helen from the limo before it falls off the highway, killing Juno. The warhead left on the island detonates without killing anyone.
Harry discovers that Aziz and his men are holding Dana hostage in aMiami skyscraper and are threatening to detonate their last warhead. Harry commandeers one of the jets to rescue her. Faisil gets into the building by posing as a news cameraman. Dana steals the missile control key and flees to the roof, while Faisil kills several of Aziz's men. Aziz pursues Dana onto a tower crane, and then Harry arrives. Harry rescues Dana, and after a struggle with Aziz, he has him ensnared on the end of one of the plane's missiles, which Harry fires at a terrorist helicopter, killing Aziz and the remnants of Crimson Jihad. Harry, Helen and Dana are safely reunited.
A year later, Harry and Helen are working together as Omega agents. While on a mission at a formal party, they encounter Simon, working as a waiter and pretending to be a spy. Simon runs away in fear after they reveal themselves and threaten to kill him. Harry and Helen dance thetango, while Gib pleads for them to take their work seriously.
Marshall Manesh portrays Jamal Khaled. James Allen portrays a colonel.Ofer Samra portrays Yusif.
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 (27 m). Schwarzenegger quickly slid off the horse and a stuntman caught him; he concluded, "[this is] why I will always love stunt people".[7] Art Malik said he was drawn to the script's "pantomime quality” and the chance to work with director James Cameron.[8] Costing $100[2][3]–120[4][9] million to produce,True Lies was the first film with a production budget of over $100 million.[10] It was filmed over a seven-month schedule.[4]
Eliza Dushku alleged that while filmingTrue Lies at the age of twelve, she wassexually molested by the film's stunt coordinator,Joel Kramer. According to Dushku, soon after that, an adult friend of hers confronted Kramer on set, and that same day, Dushku was injured during a stunt and several of her ribs were broken, while Kramer was responsible for her safety.[11] Kramer has denied the accusation of sexual misconduct.[12] Dushku's co-stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, and director James Cameron all voiced support and admiration for Dushku's bravery.[13][14][15]
Of the many locations that were used in the film, theRosecliff Mansion was used for the ballroom tango scenes in the beginning of the film and the exterior of the Swiss chalet that Harry Tasker infiltrates isOchre Court.[16] The ballroom dancing scene that closes the film, as well as the scenes in the lobby of the fictional Hotel Marquis in Washington, take place in the Crystal Ballroom of theMillennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.[17] The outdoor structures used by Aziz's smuggling ring as a base of operations were a series of custom made Alaska Structures fabric buildings, leased to the production crew during filming.[18]
It was during the production ofTrue Lies in 1993 when Cameron would also first meet his futureTitanic andAvatar film series co-producerJon Landau, who Cameron stated in July 2024 was "the studio 'suit' assigned to overseeTrue Lies."[19] In the time following the production ofTrue Lies, Landau would leave Fox to join Cameron's production companyLightstorm.[19]
This was the first film to use the 199420th Century Fox logo and fanfare adapted and conducted byBruce Broughton.[20]
| True Lies | |
|---|---|
| Film score by Brad Fiedel and various artists | |
| Released | July 19, 1994 |
| Length | 70:35 |
| Label | Lightstorm/Epic Soundtrax |
All music is composed by Brad Fiedel, except where noted
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Performer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Sunshine of Your Love" | Jack Bruce,Eric Clapton | Living Colour | 5:17 |
| 2. | "Darkness, Darkness" | Jesse Colin Young | Screaming Trees | 4:08 |
| 3. | "Alone in the Dark" | John Hiatt | John Hiatt | 4:46 |
| 4. | "Entity" | Christian Leibfried, Geoff Haba, Bryan Tulao, David Robert Gould | Mother Tongue | 4:21 |
| 5. | "Sunshine of Your Love (The Adrian Sherwood & Skip McDonald Remix)" | Bruce, Clapton | Living Colour | 5:49 |
| 6. | "Main Title/Harry Makes His Entrance" | 2:40 | ||
| 7. | "Escape from the Chateau" | 2:41 | ||
| 8. | "Harry's Sweet Home" | 1:06 | ||
| 9. | "Harry Rides Again" | 7:05 | ||
| 10. | "Spying on Helen" | 4:16 | ||
| 11. | "Juno's Place" | 1:29 | ||
| 12. | "Caught in the Act" | 1:29 | ||
| 13. | "Shadow Lover" | 1:20 | ||
| 14. | "Island Suite" | 6:55 | ||
| 15. | "Causeway/Helicopter Rescue" | 7:56 | ||
| 16. | "Nuclear Kiss" | 0:51 | ||
| 17. | "Harry Saves the Day" | 8:26 | ||
| Total length: | 70:35 | |||
Songs appearing in the film not included on the soundtrack album:
True Lies was a box-office success. Opening in 2,368 theaters in theUnited States and Canada, it rankednumber one at the US box office in its opening weekend, grossing $25,869,770 and beatingForrest Gump.[2] OnceForrest Gump returned to the top of the box office the following week,True Lies dropped into second place, grossing $20.7 million.[21] It set a record opening weekend in South Korea with a gross of $995,023.[22] It also had a record opening weekend in Japan for distributorNippon Herald with a gross of $3 million and wasnumber one at the Japanese box office for twelve straight weeks.[23][24]True Lies was the second major American film to be released in China sinceThe Fugitive and generated a total ofCN¥103 million, becoming the country's highest-grossing Hollywood film.[25][26] The film also became the highest-grossing film of all time in the Philippines.[27]True Lies 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,[5] making it thethird-highest-grossing film of 1994, behindThe Lion King andForrest Gump.[6][28]
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 70% based on 57 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".[29] OnMetacritic, the film has aweighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on reviews from 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[30] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[31]
Roger Ebert of theChicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, writing, "It's stuff like that we go to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies for, andTrue Lies has a lot of it: laugh-out-loud moments when the violence is so cartoonish we don't take it seriously, and yet are amazed at its inventiveness and audacity." He wrote that he found the plot "perfunctory", but praised the film's stunts and special effects.[32]
The film received criticism for its portrayal ofMiddle Easterners and its treatment of female characters.[33] John Simon of theNational Review criticized the plot line of the hero character (Schwarzenegger) using his agency's resources to stalk and frighten his wife as cruel and misogynistic.[34] In a negative review,Kenneth Turan of theLos Angeles Times wrote:
Taken individually, the cruder and childish things about this film, its determination to use caricatured unshaven Arabs as terrorists, the pleasure it takes in continually mortifying a weasely used-car salesman (Bill Paxton) in the most personal ways, might be overlooked, but added together they leave a sour taste.[35]
SomeArabs andMuslims perceived the film as conveying stronganti-Arab oranti-Muslim prejudice,[36][37] with some Arab-American advocacy groups calling for its banning in Arab countries.[38][39]
In a 2022 retrospective review, Polish writer Jacek Szafranowicz called the film "a masterpiece of cinematic fun", noting that the collaboration between the director and its main star "deserves a golden medal".[40] Commenting on the state ofblockbuster films, Scott Tobias ofThe Guardian andThe A.V. Club wrote, "True Lies is the strange case of a film that's alternately retrograde, forward-looking, and thoroughly of its time. For better or worse, it's a marker of how the Hollywood action blockbuster had advanced in 1994, as well as a commentary (intended or not) on the troubled state of American masculinity, marital relationships, and lingering racial attitudes."[41]
On October 1, 1994,True Lies was banned from Indonesian movie theaters due to the film spawning controversy that focused on Muslim leaders insulting Islam and portraying themselves as religious extremists. According to the Council of Muslim Scholars, it led people to hate Arab terrorists defending the interests of some Islamic nations, but justified American terrorism. Earlier that year, officials had already bannedSchindler's List from the country because it contained too much violence and nudity.[58]
True Lies was released onVHS on January 10, 1995 and onLaserDisc a month later on February 8. It was the second LaserDisc release to feature aDolby Digital AC-3 track, afterClear and Present Danger.[59] On August 20, 1996, the film was released on aTHX certified Widescreen Series VHS release, along withSpeed,The Abyss andThe Last of the Mohicans.[60] It was then released onDVD on May 25, 1999. A high-definition version was released onD-Theater in 2003. In 2018, James Cameron stated that a new transfer forBlu-ray had been completed, but he hasn't found time to review it.[61]
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the film for purchase digitally on December 12, 2023, followed by a release on Blu-ray andUltra HD Blu-ray on March 12, 2024.[62][63] This release, along with the 4K releases of Cameron'sAliens andThe Abyss, have received criticism for the quality of their A.I. upscaling.[64][65]
In April 1997, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold met with Cameron and discussed the possibility of an eventualTrue Lies sequel, which would also bring back Curtis in her role. At the time, Cameron was busy working onTitanic.[66][67] Following the release ofTitanic in late 1997, Cameron was planning to begin work on aTrue Lies sequel early the following year. Schwarzenegger and Arnold were expected to reprise their roles.[68] Cameron conducted a search for a writer to work onTrue Lies 2. In August 1999, Cameron and20th Century Fox were negotiating to haveJeff Eastin write the script under Cameron's supervision.[67] At the time, the film was being planned for a mid-2001 release, with Cameron expected to direct it.[69] By the end of 1999, there was the possibility that filming would begin in the third quarter of 2000.[70] However, development of the script was ongoing as of June 2000. Cameron planned to produceTrue Lies 2 with Fox, but was undecided at that time on whether he would also direct it, as he wanted to wait until the script was complete.[71][72][73] Eastin worked with Cameron on the project for approximately a year and a half,[74] and Schwarzenegger and Arnold liked Eastin's script.[75][76]
By March 2001, the script had been completed, and Curtis was confirmed to reprise her role alongside Schwarzenegger and Arnold.[77] Following theSeptember 11 attacks, Schwarzenegger said in January 2002, "We'll shoot it next year. We have a good script. There does need to be some changes because it deals with some terrorist act of some sort. But it's pretty much done."[78] Later in 2002, Cameron said the film would not be made following theSeptember 11 attacks: "Terrorism is no longer something to take as lightly as we did in the first one. I just can't see it happening given the current world climate."[79][80]
In June 2003, Schwarzenegger said that after the attacks, "Cameron was worried because there's an airplane scene – a terrific airplane scene – that didn't have anything to do with the terrorism that we had in 9/11, but it was a great fight scene inside the plane while the plane goes down and this kind of thing. It was a very important moment in the movie, and he felt like he can't do that and therefore has to rewrite it ... These things take a long time."[81] The following month, Curtis said the film would never be made due to theSeptember 11 attacks: "Terrorists aren't funny anymore. They never were, but, it was distant enough from our psyche that we could make it funny. It'll never be funny again. I just think that that is over, that kind of humor is over."[82] Eastin citedSchwarzenegger's 2003 election as California governor as another reason thatTrue Lies 2 did not get made.[74] However, Arnold remained optimistic that the film would be made.[b]
In 2005, Arnold said he had met with Cameron, Curtis, Paxton, and Dushku to discussTrue Lies 2. Arnold said the project would include the return of Schwarzenegger and that filming would begin once his role as California governor was concluded.[83] Cameron said in 2009 that there were no plans to make the film,[85][87][88] and Curtis, in 2019, reiterated her previous comments: "I don't think we could ever do anotherTrue Lies after 9/11."[89] Art Malik concurred, saying during the time ofTrue Lies' filming, "there was an element of fanaticism brewing and anti-West feeling going on. But I don't think any of us took any of it as seriously as we had to after 9/11. I think one of the reasons for that is probably the reasonTrue Lies 2 was never made.”[8]
In the 2005 filmThe Kid & I, Tom Arnold plays a fictional character based on himself. In that film, the character had starred inTrue Lies and is pursued by a fan and teams up withHenry Winkler andLinda Hamilton to make a sequel; Schwarzenegger and Curtis cameo as themselves.
Shortly after the film's release,video games based on the film of the same name were released for theSuper Nintendo Entertainment System,Sega Genesis,Game Gear andGame Boy platforms.
On February 10, 2021,CBS announced a pilot order for theTrue Lies series adaptation.Matt Nix wrote the pilot and produce with Josh Levy via Flying Glass of Milk Productions.James Cameron, director of the film, executive produced with Rae Sanchini throughLightstorm Entertainment. Mary Viola ofWonderland Sound and Vision also executive produced, with Corey Marsh of Wonderland co-executive producing.McG was set to direct the pilot and executive produce via Wonderland.[90] In March 2021, CBS moved the pilot "off cycle" to give the series producers more time to film the pilot later in the year.[91]
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.[92]Steve Howey andGinger Gonzaga were cast in the lead roles, while Erica Hernandez,Omar Miller, Mike O'Gorman, Annabella Didion, and Lucas Jaye round out the supporting roles. On May 13, 2022, CBS officially picked up the series.[92] The series was scheduled to premiere on February 23, 2023, however, it was delayed to March 1, 2023, and was ultimately canceled in May 2023.[93][94]
James Cameron's dual Mars projects will touch down as a Fox miniseries and in IMAX 3-D in the spring of 2001, just months before the planned release of "True Lies 2," which Cameron is now telling friends he will direct.
To tell you the truth, I kind of lost my appetite for it ("True Lies 2") after Sept. 11
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