_True Lies_ reviewed by Cynthia Fuchs This is a movie true to its title. By now you've heard that director James Cameron is a crazyman on the set, that Arnold Schwarzenegger is back, that it cost some $120 million, that there are terrific stunts and explosions, that Tom Arnold plays the sidekick and Jamie Lee Curtis is the wife who doesn't know her husband is a jacked-up super-spy. All of this is true. At least, according to the film's promotional stories. It's this shifting line between truth and fiction that drives the narrative. Just about everyone in it is lying about something: the U.S. government, mass media, terrorist organizations, family members, and used car salesmen all have secrets. All these interconnecting deceptions make a clever point about the network of lies that organize daily lives, not to mention international market systems, political intrigues, and the movies. But really, does it matter what's true if the action, the one-liners, and the heavy-duty hardware work on cue? And according to the enthusiastic audience response when I saw it, it all clicks. Which is not to say that there aren't other questions worth asking. On one level, the film takes tremendous pleasure in its over-the-top plot. For fifteen years Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger) has been posing as a computer salesman who's so boring that his family is quietly rebelling. Wife Helen (Curtis, who is terrific) is considering an affair and daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku) is stealing money and hanging out with a kid on a motorcycle. Meanwhile Harry is working for an anti-terrorist agency called the Omega Sector; their official slogan is "The Last Line of Defense.'' Headed by Mr. Right Himself, Charlton Heston (with sinister eyepatch and facial scars), Omega is clearly self-parodic: its gorgeously extravagant security system alludes to previous incarnations of ultra-spyness, from Strangelove to Bond to _Total Recall_. _True Lies_ is nothing if not shrewd. Pre-emptive strikes R Us. The central Omega operatives are Harry, his buddy Gib (Arnold), plus a techie named Faisl, apparently infamous for their wildly imaginative and violent adventures (and yes, Harry and Gib do the requisite buddy homo-erotic/phobic patter'). At the moment, they're using their elaborate technology to battle a group of Arab terrorists named the Crimson Jihad, led by the fanatical Abu Salim Aziz (Art Malik). Following the World Trade Center bombing, Arabs are showing up in U.S. popular culture as the most likely targets of racist demonization. (Obviously Faisl is employed - by the movie anyway - to mitigate against such accusations: "See, we have a good Arab too!''). The badness of these guys is underlined by their access to nuclear warheads (of Russian origin, of course), media savvy (they videotape all their escapades so their demands can be televised), and collusion with a Wicked Asian Woman (Tia Carrere - and she, after _Wayne's World_ and _Rising Sun_, deserves better than this). They're also presented as rather comically inept (reminiscent of the odious _Temple of Doom_), and this makes Harry's always dead-on aim funny too. That is, the movie jokes about the action-pic rules we all know so well: *because* he's Arnold, he never misses. And look out, in the midst of all this formula comes a mini-near-subversion. Aziz declares for the camcorder that the U.S. uses terrorist and cowardly methods, indicting their bombing of women and children during the Gulf War. In another movie this might have been a charged political issue. But this is summerfare, so even the possibility of such ideological insurrection is undercut. Just as Aziz makes his point, the camera battery goes out, so his speechifying gets a laugh. The ostensible good guys, on the other hand, get to wreak spectacular havoc in the name of trademark Cameronian Action. The straight-ahead action sequences are marked by great stuntwork (during which Schwarzenegger's double is a little too easy to spot). Harry fights assassins in a mall men's room, gallops on city streets and through the Marriot Hotel on a commandeered cop's horse after the motorcycle-riding Aziz, shoots and blows up many, many villains throughout the film, and by the end uses a Harrier jet to manage all kinds of pyrotechnic wizardry (which is visually exciting and shows us exactly where the film's awesome expenditures occurred). And there are sly self-references (for example, the film opens with an image reminiscent of _T2_: Harry infiltrates an elegant party by cutting his way through an ice-over swimmig pool with a big knife, displaying a big thumbs- up as he emerges, the reverse of the Terminator's demise in molten steel) And yet, the movie makes some interesting observations about the uses of terrorism to enforce "domestic tranquility.'' Cameron once called _T2_ a "war movie about peace''; this is a spy movie about "family values'' (shades of _Patriot Games_). The chief terrorist in this arena is not the evil Aziz (though he inevitably involves Helen and Dana in his scheming), but Harry himself. When he suspects Helen of having an affair, Harry marshals all the expensive equipment at his disposal to track her all over DC. He angrily dismisses Gib's objection that this is a misuse of funds and a "breach of national security''; clearly, his marriage stands in for the "last line'' of a national self- image, and must be protected at all costs. Some very strange moments arise from Harry's obsession with his wife's doings. He monitors her clandestine meetings with Simon (Bill Paxton), a used car salesman whose come-on is to pretend to be exactly what Harry is, a glamorous international spy. He even describes Harry's supposedly secret deeds as his made-up story. Helen is turned on, but tentative: she loves her husband, after all. (If only she knew who he "really'' was! Can you guess where this is going?). Through some complicated plot- gyrations, an incognito Harry "captures'' Helen and interrogates her: she's in a room with a one-way mirror and his and Gib's voices are electronically disguised. "How did you meet him?'' they ask. "Did you have sexual relations?'' Yeah yeah. She's humiliated and the scene is certainly troubling, but (not to put too smart a spin on it) it also implies that Harry is a self- important blockhead who needs all this high-tech equipment to have a conversation with his wife. There's more. The movie is full of turns and extensions; there are several points when it could have ended, but it goes on, delivering more "spy'' gizmos, more explosions, more weapons- as-dicks jokes, more mostly sincere assertions of the importance of family. It's also no surprise that Schwarzenegger is the movie's best special effect. Careening through crowds of bystanders on that horse or in the Harrier jet, he keeps saying "Saurry!'' in that indelible accent; his squinty-eyed "suspicious looks'' are granted enormous, funny close-ups; his tangos with Carrere and Curtis are perfectly absurd: he's too bulky, too cute, too robotic. Then again, this would seem to be the point. Or one of them. Over the years, much has been written about his peculiar incarnation of the "American Way,'' his fascist implications, his aggressive sense of humor, his devotion to his kids, his political aspirations, his monstrous body, his business acumen, his Arnoldness. It's probably all true. Cynthia Fuchs teachs film and media studies at George Mason University. Copyright 1994 by Cynthia Fuchs. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint this review without the permission of the author. This review originally appeared in the Philadelphia _City Paper_.