Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Ranked Worst To Best
6. True Lies
True Lies is a testament to how far one man will go to gas up their ride-or-die, with director James Cameron devoting every other frame of his 1994 action-comedy blockbuster to reminding us all just how cool and unique a screen presence Arnold Schwarzenegger truly is. A comeback moment for the actor as much as it was a false dawn for a post-Last Action Hero resurgence, True Lies is every bit the spirited, all-out adventure you'd expect from a Cameron blockbuster, albeit one not without some significant flaws.
Based upon a French film called La Totale!, True Lies centred around Schwarzenegger as Harry Tasker, a spy for an ultra-secret U.S. agency who has kept his life a complete secret from his wife, Helen, embodied brilliantly by Jamie-Lee Curtis. As his double life leads to a marriage crisis, Harry has to save his relationship and the United States at the same time, resulting in some great interplay between the two actors, as well as some of Cameron's most breathtaking action sequences to date.
Where True Lies stumbles is, ironically, in its lack of balance. Harry's suspicions of Helen's infidelity lead to an investigation involving the man she's seeing, Simon (played by a gloriously moustachioed Bill Paxton), and it's a detour that stymies the up-until-then brisk pace of the story. Cameron eventually reconciles these two converging narratives once Harry's double life is revealed to Helen, leading to the resumption of normal programming (in this case, Arnold hosing down terrorists with an improvised flamethrower), but it stands out like an awkward filling sandwiched between a brilliant second and third act.
Then there are the movies' villains, who are essentially just bland terrorist caricatures for Arnie to shoot his way through. Schwarzenegger has tangled with far better over the years, and it remains True Lies' biggest shame that it's so unimaginative in this department.
Neither of these issues prove enough to derail the film, of course, which remains one of Schwarzenegger's best. With plenty of great action and a comedic sincerity only Arnold could embody, True Lies is a true action spectacle - a gloriously self-indulgent offering that'll have you punching the air with glee that someone gave James Cameron access to two Harrier jump jets.
Just a shame about that waxy 4K release, though.