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True Lies

True Lies

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $11.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Truly good - no lie!
Review: Better than your average shoot 'em up, this Arnold movie has several things going for it - two of which are Jamie Lee Curtis. Other highlights are Tom Arnold's good performance as the comedy sidekick, Tia Carrere as one of several bad guys, Bill Paxton as a womanizing used-car dealer, an interesting chase, generic middle-easterners with nuclear bombs, Eliza Dushku as the wild teenage daughter, Harrier jets in downtown Miami, and your various explosions.

What's not to like?

Directed by James Cameron, who also directed a little-known film, Titanic. DVD only has a trailer.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Widescreen Letterbox Format
Review: I fail to see the logic in creating a DVD like this. While it is in widescreen format, it is in standard 4:3 (1.33:1) rather than anamorphic (sized for 16:9 widescreen TVs).

This was one of my favorite movies. The quality of the image on this DVD is passable. I hope they release it in anamorphic format sometime in the near future for people that own more-current television sets so we can fully enjoy the technology we spent our hard-earned dollars on.

I was very pleased with the audio. While it wasn't up to Superbit standards, I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: full screen
Review: this is a great movie but i failed to buy it because its only available on widescreen letterbox format.i hope they come out with it in full or animorphic formats.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: On Arnold's acting resume "True Lies" would be his best film
Review: Now might be a good time to check out "True Lies" once again, simply because most of the principles are in the news a lot these days. After all, Arnold Swarzenegger is running for governor of California, Jamie Lee Curtis is getting great reviews for her work in the new version of "Freaky Friday," a network has shown enough faith in Eliza Dushku to star her in a new television series "Tru Calling," and Tom Arnold is hosting a sports talk show on television while being dissed by ex-wife Roseanne Barr as she prepares for her new reality show. Of course, you have to wonder whatever happened to James Cameron, the director of this 1994 action comedy (my own guess is that the spirit of David O. Sleznick is whispering in Cameron's ear, "Okay, now that you're 'King of the World' what are you going to do next?").

Arnold is Harry Tasker, a special agent for a super secret government organization, but his wife Helen (Curtis), thinks he is just a boring computer salesman. While he is dealing with cracking a ring of international terrorists, she is looking for a little more excitement in her life. Ironically, she thinks she has found this in a fast talking used car salesman who hits on lonely wives by pretending he is a secret agent. Of course, the irony gets a bit more intense as the movie progresses and the chief attraction is that Harry is trying to save his marriage along with the free world. If there is one lesson this film teaches, then it would clearly be the old adage that it takes two to tango.

This week my thinking is that "True Lies" is ultimate Arnold Swarzenegger film, combining the action of the "Terminator" films with the appealing comedy of "Kindergarten Cop." This is a film that is able to have it both ways when it comes to Arnold's cinematic persona, being faithful to his larger than life action sequences while also carrying off some tongue-in-cheek parody. Meanwhile, Curtis turns in the second best performance of her career, which I can now say because I just saw her best in "Freaky Friday" this afternoon. Tom Arnold has never been better an the second banana, which is something he probably knows, and Charlton Heston has a choice bit part as the head of the secret organization for which Harry works. I have heard there is supposed to be a sequel to this film, which might be derailed by Arnold's candidacy (especially if he gets elected), but that might be just as well because a sequel could not be better than the original in this case.

Schwarzenegger movies will be on hiatus, at least in California, for the next couple of months. Fortunately, the movies of actors running for political office are a lot more accessible today than they were went Ronald Reagan was running for president (Note: "Bedtime for Bonzo" is a very good B-comedy and primarily a joke to those who have not seen the film). If you are thinking of watching a Schwarzenegger movie to mull over his viability as a political candidate, then "True Lies" seems the obvious choice. As for me, I watched it again because I wanted to see more of the funny (and sexy) Jamie Lee Curtis, and Laurie Strode just does not suffice any more.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hints re Fanaticism and its effects on terrorism
Review: 8/15/03 The movie hit home to all income groups(1.low income terrorist) ,their front being involved as a Ms. Merchant for the 2.Smithsonian Institute(wealthy income),and 3.Harry(actor Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his "middle class" family in what could never happened in reality involved in his life as an "undercover agent'(and even being rescued individually by him at intense minutes in the picture)...Hitting all classes it1. appeals to those who enjoy violence2.with the Society Hill set,those who like to feel affluence is still daunting and 3. despite all that violence where "all the bad guys" are demolished that the "middle class family' are the " last minutes" in the movie along with Harry's pals following as usual in the van as his protection,living the 'American Dream',with their teen age daughter back to being Harry's "little pumpkin" vs earlier scenes of her on the back of a motorcycle after stealing money from his jacket pocket(with a little extra to the American Dream of Harry and his wife(played by actress Jamie Lee Curtis) dancing in the ballroom belonging to High Society.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An over the top action classic; Arnie/Cameron style
Review: After they crafted a masterpiece with Terminator 2; writer/director James Cameron and action superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger re-teamed for this over the top comic action romp that ranks up there with Arnie's great action flicks. Good 'ol Ah-nold plays a covert intelligence agent whose secret life as a spy is revealed to his wife of 15 years (Jamie Lee Curtis who goes from homely house wife to hot damsel in almost a split second) while he gets mixed up in a terrorist plot to smuggle nuclear weapons. Ethnic stereotypes are abound, and the term suspension of disbelief comes into play quite a bit, but one can't help but love True Lies as a bonafide comic action classic. Tom Arnold is surprisingly great as Arnie's long time partner, and the film also stars Cameron regular Bill Paxton (great as a deceitful used car salesman), Tia Carrere, and a young Eliza Dushku as Arnie's daughter.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Smart and adventurous
Review: ...I recently reviewed this film looking for misogyny and possible ways out of it, as presented in the film. There's more reasons to think that Cameron is trying to argue with sexism than endorse it. If you accept the logic of this film, you WILL love women.

First the sexist reasoning. Almost all of Tom Arnold's jokes come at the expense of women. The commonest one being that screwing a woman is to screw her over. Jamie-Lee Curtis, Arnold's wife, spends much of the film being a damselle in distress. And when she fights out of her predicament it's in a cat-fight with Tia Carrere. She's also interested in an affair with an ambiguously sexed love interest. The guy she wants to have an affair with is a used car dealer who listens to the Bee Gees and likes boys' behinds. And then there's the minor footnote of the time Arnold rides a horse into an elevator with an elderly couple. The little old lady is disgusted, frumpish and silly, as even the horse is smart enough to see when it smacks her face with its tail. The little old man husband meanwhile thinks Arnold's horse is swell. Moral: men have longer adolescences than women.

The anti-sexist stuff is there too in direct response to the misogyny. JLC really does fight her way out of her trap. And when Arnold saves her, she grasps his arm as vigorously as he does her's. Arnold's daughter becomes the damselle in disress in the end. (SPOILER WARNING: SEE THE FILM BEFORE YOU READ FURTHER.) But she singlehandedly prevents Miami from being nuked. And at the close of the film Arnold has a great time clowning around with his wife and daughter.

Cameron is offering a thought experiment: What if all the utterly sexist thoughts which flit through young men's minds are true? What if women really are confused at best and silly at worst? What if their beauty is only skin deep? And what if their devotion can easily fray? Say all that is true. Can you still love them? The answer is one that any good New Age guru is going to accept: you can because women are FUN.

(There's also a hint that the film is really a personal piece of art when the Arab terrorist directs himself in a video warning to the US.)

Please, Jim! Come back to action! No one else does it as good as you! Just treat us worker ants like we're the alpha males and we'll follow you every time!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: We love this movie except for the foul language.
Review: Tom arnold is actually funny in this movie, but his foul mouth keeps this to a 4 star movie, and keeps it away from the kids. And I don't see why the foulness was necessary. Don't we include nudity and foul language when we have a bad script or bad director?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I never saw it coming
Review: Before Spetember 11, no one would have figured James Cameron was a prophet. Same for Tom Clancy. But where Clancy, who does something similar in The Sum of All Fears, has as his hero ubernerd Jack Ryan, INTJ, Cameron has as his hero the far more fun and accessible ESTP Arnold. Imagine James Bond written by alpha-male Americans for alpha-male Americans, instead of the cool and dry diehard Brit Ian Fleming. (To see what these tags of character's mean go to keirsey.com, which explains the whole business of INTJ's or ESTP's eloquently and simply.)

The Amazon writeup for this film implies Cameron doesn't like women. But Jamie Lee Curtis does look to be having fun. Yes, us men are going ga-ga for her as she is exploited. But (a) she raked in a heap of money (b) her stunning body has been immortalized in film and (c) how many women can claim to have turned on so many men at the same time with so little effort? (Hint: Curtis may very well be an alpha-female. Maybe and ENTJ.)

The action sequences in this film, as in all Cameron films, have a serious true-to-life feel. Arnold may very well be a psychopath as he slaughters deranged terrorist after deranged terrorist utterly without remorse or even blinking an eye. But the way it's done you really get the feeling that the violence is essential to the story and had to be done this way. (Again, unlike Sum of All Fears, which is a major letdown once you know anything about plotting. Why is the leader of The Greatest Nation on Earth not levelheaded? The story's suspense derives entirely from the US President acting like a nincompoop. Which speaks well neither towards Clancy the democrat nor Clancy the patriot.) Which is why Cameron is better than Sam Peckinpah, who filmed Tarkovsky-like action sequences that often seemed out of place.

There's also enough gadgetry in this film to keep the editors of Maxim busy for at least a year. The subbasement of the building Arnold and co-star Tom Arnold work in is a standout true geek heaven. Cameron really delivers the goods.

Let's just hope he stops trying to grow up with this Titanic stuff and returns to the his teenage boy roots. He's in a league of his own.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: EXCELLENT
Review: This is the best action movie i have ever seen. I saw almost every Arnie movie but this the best one. James Cameron has proved that he is one of the best Director in the World. I would recommend it to Arnie's Fans and Action Lovers. Infact for all. It's worth watching.


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