True Lies has Jamie Lee Curtis married to Arnold Schwarzenegger who is your typical American suburban husband with Austrian accent. By day he's a computer salesman who takes a lot of business trips leaving Curtis and their daughter Eliza Dushku to fend for themselves pretty much. But it's all a scam. Those trips are for Uncle Sam because Arnie's a government agent for some unnamed agency. If this film were post 9/11 it would clearly be National Security. But wherever he works Schwarzengger has Charlton Heston for a boss and that's one mighty stern boss.

His last trip overseas may have uncovered a plot for some Isis like group to detonate some nuclear weapons smuggled out of Kazakhstan in the USA. While Arnie is out fighting Jihadists, Jamie Lee is sitting home and bored and gets herself involved with a used car salesman played by Bill Paxton who's got a pretty good line.

Let's say that to keep the marriage together Arnie decides to let Jamie Lee and then their daughter into his world. It causes all kinds of complications and some cliffhanger situations one after another worthy of Indiana Jones.

True Lies got an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects and it's presented to the audience in a tongue in cheek vein worthy of an Indiana Jones film. Some notice should be taken of Tom Arnold who plays Schwarzenegger's sidekick and he really gets into the proper spirit of things.

Definitely for fans of California's former Governator.

I SHOULD love TRUE LIES. I mean, I love the track records of almost all those involved, and this was a hugely successful movie packed with explosive action. It's a film that mixes in ample comedy with the thrills and most people seem to love it. Yet it's a film that leaves me somewhat cold, and no amount of sophisticated special effects shots can change that.

Sadly, what we have here starts out as a promising Bond-style spy thriller that gradually descends to the level of a lame comedy, padded out with sleaze and pee jokes masquerading as family cinema. Man, I don't know what Cameron was thinking when he wrote the screenplay, but he clearly didn't employ the services of an editor to take out a lot of endless padding. TRUE LIES is an example of a director at his self-indulgent worst.

Don't get me wrong, I love the spy stuff in this film. Arnie is at the top of his game, throwing plenty of workable humour into the mix, and the action scenes look highly impressive; the ending with the fighter jet is something that hadn't been done before (and hasn't been attempted since, for that matter). However, the fights do fail to be immersive, and there's always something dumb around the corner (like the machine gun falling down the steps) waiting to take you out of it.

The worst thing, for me, is by far Jamie Lee Curtis's character. She's supposed to be this mousy, bored housewife who transforms into a feisty femme fatale, but I didn't buy it for a second. The main plot is forgotten for a whole hour or so while the movie takes a detour into laboured comedy as Arnie investigates his wife's private life, and this part is excruciating in the extreme; even a funny turn from the reliable Bill Paxton can't change that.

I was puzzled when I heard that Curtis won a Golden Globe for her performance in this film. It's the worst I've seen from her, and a surprise given that she was so good expressing fear in the early slasher movies of her career. Her acting here is embarrassingly bad, and it's no surprise she disappeared from our screens afterwards (aside from appearing in some best forgotten HALLOWEEN sequels). The film's nadir is the ultra-humiliating striptease sequence which is sleazy beyond believe, and Cameron's attempts to lighten the mood with some slapstick comedy just fail. God, what was he thinking? I watch B-movies on a regular basis and even the sleaziest fail to objectify women in this way.

There's lots of other bad stuff too, including the most racist depiction of Arabic characters that I've seen in a Hollywood movie (Art Malik should be ashamed). Cameron was planning a TRUE LIES 2 before 9/11 and went on record to say that the sequel was cancelled because 'terrorists weren't just funny anymore'. I've got news for you Cameron, they were never funny, and that becomes clear watching this.

Cast-wise, Tom Arnold clearly relishes the comedy sidekick type role, but it's so one-note that it becomes tiresome around the halfway mark. And watch out for an excruciatingly bad turn from Tia Carrere, who gives a performance that's even worse than Curtis's! Incredible, but true. My favourite part of the film? The gag with the rocket launcher, in which Cameron makes up for a mistake earlier in his career; when scripting RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, he had Stallone firing a rocket launcher from a helicopter, leaving the guys behind him unscathed. He corrects that here, and it's the funniest thing in the otherwise mildly disappointing movie.

Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a US government super agent at work, and a computer sales rep to his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and kid (Eliza Dushku). Helen is bored and gets roped in by sleazy lying Simon (Bill Paxton) who only pretends to be a super agent. Meanwhile Harry is on a case to find Arab smugglers with nuclear weapons. When Harry tries to set up a sting on his wife, she gets tangle up in his real case.

This has some great real action. There are some really exciting bits. Director James Cameron is quite a master as an action director, and in this one he adds a dash of humor. Tom Arnold is actually funny in this. Schwarzenegger is able to play up his action hero persona and marry it with a family man facade. It is great fun. The only awkward thing is Harry grilling his wife. It does get us to Jamie Lee Curtis in the sexy thong. So there's some good that results from that. It's a great ride.