True Lies

1994 Directed by James Cameron

When he said I do, he never said what he did.

A fearless, globe-trotting, terrorist-battling secret agent has his life turned upside down when he discovers his wife might be having an affair with a used car salesman while terrorists smuggle nuclear war heads into the United States.

Arnold Schwarzenegger Jamie Lee Curtis Tom Arnold Bill Paxton Tia Carrere Art Malik Eliza Dushku Grant Heslov Charlton Heston Marshall Manesh James Allen Dieter Rauter Jane Morris Katsy Chappell Crystina Wyler Ofer Samra Paul Barselou Charles A. Tamburro Jean-Claude Parachini Uzi Gal Majed Ibrahim Armen Ksajikian Mike Akrawi Mike Cameron Charles Cragin Louai Mardini Gino Salvano Scott Dotson Tom Isbell Show All… John Bruno

141 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 8

98
And on the 7th day, God created True Lies, and it was good.
Review by matt lynch ★★★★★ 6

"DA BRIDGE IS AAUUUT!"
The best (and the most) American action film of the last 30 or so years.
Mushroom cloud kiss is the image of Cameron's career.
Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★ 20

I’d forgotten how humorous True Lies is. It’s a comedic parody about a James Bond-esque secret agent, and the double life he lives with his unsuspecting wife. With the laughs, comes a lot of action and crazy stunts. Arnie, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bill fuckin’ Paxton, and yes, even Tom Arnold give unforgettable performances.
Terrorists are inane, asinine, heedless and daft. They deserve to be ridiculed, derided, lampooned and jeered at. James Cameron holds nothing back in depicting the radical extreme terrorists as complete and total buffoons. Nothing they say or do, makes any sense. You laugh like hell when the terrorist leader is making a propaganda video, and his camcorder’s battery runs dead. These bad guys ain’t the sharpest tools…
Review by josh lewis ★★★★ 3

i will love just about any movie that features arnold (the absolute least inconspicuous looking and sounding man on the planet) as an undercover spy and has him violently dispatch most of the people who appear on screen. if you can accept that this movie was very obviously written by a man who's been divorced 4 times it's a fun as hell meathead riff on the espionage genre and has 3 of the most jaw-dropping practical action setpieces i've ever seen. the kind of action movie that has not one, not two but three climactic setpieces, each of which is filled with so many insane stunts and gags and is so exhausting that just when you think it's ending you…
Review by Will Menaker ★★★★½ 5

The Omega Sector is the last line of defense against wife crime.
Fuck me I had forgotten how hard this movie annihilates. Let's run it down:
-Tom Arnold just absolutely killing every bit of comic relief as a spy with extreme divorced guy energy. Also, this is Arnie's best comedic performance, not just funny because its Arnie, but timing, line delivery, irony. He slays.
-The A plot about Islamic terrorists and nuclear weapons just stops about a third of the way into the movie so they can have an entirely different B plot about Arnold turning the entire apparatus of the US National Security State against his wife for having an emotional affair.
-Angel in heaven Bill Paxton saying "I…
Review by Corie ★★★★ 31

Äktschn-Arnie-Ranking: Platz 4
Jetzt hat mich endgültig das Arnie-Äktschn-Fieber gepackt 😂
"True Lies" ist eine herrliche Agentenfilm-Parodie, in der natürlich auch unser 007 so bissl sein Fett wegbekommt... mit all seinen Klischees, einfach herrlich überzogen (im positiven Sinne).
Und die steirische Eiche als Harry Tusker ist mal wieder optimal besetzt 😂
Harry Tusker führt ein Doppelleben im großen Stile, einerseits arbeitet er als Agent für die Organisation Omega, ein echter "Bond" eben mit allen Mitteln ausgestattet. Seine Frau Helen ahnt nichts davon, denn zuhause ist er aber eher Mr. 08/15, ein Langweiler. Und sagen wir es so dieses Spielchen hat ungeahnte Folgen.
Aber, jetzt mal so unter uns Arnie: als Jaime Lee Curtis für dich tanzte, mit ihren nassen Haaren…
Review by Siegel™ ★★★★½ 7

Unedniably absurd, hillariously zany, witty, refreshingly action packed, a perfect blockbuster. Schwarzenegger knocks a policeman off a horse and uses it to chase a bad guy on a motorcycle through a crowded hotel and off the top of a skyscraper and that's just in the beginning. I'm hoarse from cheering and clapping and screaming and laughing and shrieking from beginning to end. No offense but every other movie can go fuck themselves 🙂
Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★½ 5

If I were to ask you what three movies James Cameron made in the 90s, two would immediately come to mind. This is the third one.
Given that you're getting James Cameron at the peak of his powers, you'd think that this would be a bigger deal in the cultural zeitgeist. It is quite a fun Schwarzenegger comedy, but doesn't quite hit the heights or have the same iconic scenes that other Cameron movies do.
If I had to sum up this movie briefly, the action is great, and the comedy is meh. I realized near the end they could have cut the whole Bill Paxton "is she cheating" part of the movie, and it would have worked better. There's…
Review by CinemaClown ★★★½ 2

After making a stunning breakthrough with The Terminator, further expanding the immensely captivating universe of a timeless classic with Aliens, beautifully exploring the deep secrets of the ocean with The Abyss and completely redefining action & setting a new benchmark for sequels in cinema with Terminator 2: Judgment Day, visionary filmmaker James Cameron brings his sweeping cinematic vision to an action comedy this time & does a splendid job yet again.
A loose remake of the 1991 French comedy La Totale!, the story of True Lies follows Harry Tasker; a secret agent who performs covert operations for the US government but pretends to be a computer salesman to his family. When his latest trail reveals intel about a terrorist group in possession…
Review by TajLV ★★★★½ 10

I've seen this at least five or six times and I fall in love with Jamie Lee Curtis all over again every time. The way she wets her hair with the water from the flowers. The way she strips for Arnold while he sits in the dark. Oh yeah, the rest of the film is pretty good, too, but it's that damn hotel room scene .... whew!
In fact, I was in Taipei several years ago and met a certain lady who came back to my own hotel room. The movie happened to be on the pay-per-view channel and after we watched it, I asked her if she was up for a little role play. The way she reenacted that scene ... whoa! Unforgettable.
Okay, so now everyone in the world knows why I rate this movie so highly. So sue me. But really ... it's a great film!!!
Review by Jake Alda Coffey ★★★★

My 7th grade science biology teacher was in this movie. He plays a guard in the opening scene and then a background character in a party scene later on. Whenever I saw this movie on Letterboxd or anywhere else, it would make me think of him cuz he would talk about it all the time. When he was my teacher, he was around 44 years old and had already done more things in his life than most do in a lifetime. He was a professional body builder, an actor, a member of the Academy, a meteorologist for CBS, a physical therapy specialist, a middle school science teacher, AND he was personal friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger! He was a nice guy…
Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 5

"I wanted to do something outrageous
and it felt really good, to be needed, and
to be trusted. It's just there's so much I want
to do with this life and it feels that I haven't
done anything. You know, the sand is running
out of the hourglass, and I want to look back
and say, 'See, I did that, that was me, I was
reckless and I was wild, and I fucking did it!'"
James Cameron's unmitigated masterwork.
And rest peacefully, Bill, you beautiful man.

Recent reviews

Review by Dawnorak ★★★½

James Cameron - Arnold Schwarzenegger duo works again in this wildly entertaining movie, with cool action, good comedy, and badass Arnie moments.
Review by monkey valles ★★★½

this film was very good and funny at sometimes the whole movie i thought a whole different movie but a different secnes the action is awsome the best action scene to me was the stairs part, the movie is kinda boring to me sometimes just saying i enjoyed the movie would watch it again its worth watching again its a really good movie and has really good chappas i rate it 3.5 choppas out of 5 choppas.
Review by Vurk ★★★★

Great action, genuinely funny dialogue, an interestingly morally dubious Arnold, a balls-out Bill Paxton performance, and James Cameron's action sensibilities distilled into its purest form. Proves that a lesser Cameron film is still fantastic stuff.
Review by samarthbhaskar ★★★

A re-watch of a very re-watchable movie. This time with my partner who was convinced the entire time that this movie does Jamie Lee Curtis very dirty. And then I told her about how, growing up, I knew exactly where the hotel scene was on the VHS we owned and she was like, "ok, that's kind of cute that Jamie Lee Curtis helped you develop your adolescent sexuality," so I guess I helped redeem this movie a little?
Review by landis100 ★★★★

Seems kind of random that this was James Cameron, but entertaining.
Review by jan_klobucic ★★★½

I knew before I started watching this movie that I would like it simply because it is a '90s action-comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and if that isn't a recipe for an entertaining movie, I don't know what is. Thankfully, this movie knew exactly what it was and it stayed ridiculous from the start to the finish. The movie features some of the most ridiculous and entertaining action set pieces I've seen, a premise that is just pure '90s cheesiness and ridiculous performances from most of the cast.
I'll start off with the action as it is one of the more memorable parts of the movie as there are plenty of set pieces, explosions and shootouts. The whole second part of…
Review by Jessie Gender ★★

Both racist and sexist! Not to mention entirely creepy to the point of making me hate the protagonist, The first James Cameron movie I’ve ever actively disliked. There’s some charm that saves it from true dreck but oooh boy.
Review by DrDoof ★★★ 1

Der Film soll eine Actionkomödie sein, aber der Komödienanteil geht ziemlich schief und zieht die Handlung in die Länge. Die Witze sind platt, gehen auf Kosten von (aus Film Sicht) schwächeren Menschen. Zudem wird dort ein sehr seltsames Beziehungskonstrukt zwischen Arnie und Jamie Lee Curtis gezeigt, dass witzig sein soll, aber eigentlich das traurige scheitern einer Beziehung zeigt. Über die Terroristendarstellung müsste man heutzutage auch nochmal nachdenken.
Der Actionanteil ist allerdings fett, da zeigt Cameron sein können. Wobei ich nicht das Gefühl hatte, dass hier aus technischer Sicht kein Meilenstein gesetzt wurde, wie man es sonst aus seinen Filmen kennt.
Review by Michael Gutierrez

James Cameron really trying shit.
Review by greatbigfatguy ★★★½

james cameron makes his comedy movie! beginning to end imperial propaganda, but it still looks extremely good. tom arnolds finest performance, genuinely hilarious.
Review by andy ★★★★

dudes rock
Review by Nickman1024 ★★★★

Truly Underrated Cameron film. I never heard of or even knew this movie existed until recently. I didnt understand how I could have missed a James Cameron movie and after seeing it....I Still Dont Know how people dont talk about this more!
We have Arnie, Jamie Lee Curtis, kinda annoying Tom Arnold, teenage Eliza Dushku, and the always amazing Bill Paxton.
This was the first movie to cost $100 million to make, the first non-terminator joint with Arnie and Cameron, James Cameron’s take on a spy film, an awesome action film with some very funny comedic elements (ESPECIALLY Bill Paxton’s role/subplot).
All of these things and yet this movie is still seemingly forgotten when Cameron’s films are discussed.
I suppose when you are a legend like James Cameron, something like this or The Abyss is bound to be the odd man out, but this definitely deserves to be discusses with the likes of his Terminator or Titanic