True Lies

Arnold Schwarzenegger swore that he was going back to basics after the costly explosion of last year's Last Action Hero. He's also sworn that he's changing his screen persona. Somewhere within all of this PR-driv­en swearing, there may be a grain of truth. But mostly it's all lies.

Just consider big Arnie's newest piece of over-priced, brain-dead ac­tion pic. True Lies weighs in at $120 million smackers (and still counting) and has some of the most spectacular stunt scenes of the summer's movies. It also has one of the most worthless plots of any movie around and scores new lows on the ol' misogyny meter. And, it's just plain dull. Virtually all of the major stunts are contained within the movie's first and last half hours. The 90 minutes in between is mostly composed of bad domestic karma.

In True Lies, Schwarzenegger plays a super duper secret agent who spends his time saving the world with the assistance of his electronic back-up guy, Tom Arnold. He's successful­ly convinced his wife (Jamie Lee Cur­tis), however, that he's simply a com­puter salesman. His working hours are spent slaying bad guys and blow­ing up whole buildings; at home, he puts his family to sleep with boring tales about his humdrum days at the office.

It's a perfect split life that's barely disturbed by nuclear bomb toting ter­rorists, who begin popping up in Washington, D. C, like cherry blos­soms. Arnie's life is about to be shak­en from within, however — Curtis is becoming bored with her hubby and starts looking elsewhere for excite­ment.

Her search for a meaningful relationship fills much of True Lies (though we do get a few substandard Muslim extremists trying to nuke Mi­ami). As does Arnie's jealous reaction — he spends most of the movie play­ing a humiliating fantasy game on Curtis. Not surprisingly, the movie's two plot halves (romance gone awry and implausible espionage) never make a whole.

Director James Cameron (Termi­nator I and II and Aliens) normally is fascinated by strong women. With True Lies, he and Arnie have seen fit to spend big dollars on an adolescent fit of comic book chauvinism. But as inappropriate as this movie's twisted sexual politics are, its bloated budget is the real obscenity.