Lies, True Lies and Ballistics

By RICHARD CORLISS

Hidden behind a two-way mirror, U.S. secret agent Harry Tasker is grilling a suspect. His voice electronically disguised, Harry pries and threatens until the suspect turns hysterical and throws a chair against the mirror. The interrogation victim is Harry's loving wife Helen. The spy has been having a little wicked fun.

What an odd action film True Lies is.

So far, 1994 has been a rough year for some acclaimed writer-directors. They spend all their ingenuity and a good deal of money putting a personal twist on an old genre -- Lawrence Kasdan with his Wyatt Earp western, James L. Brooks with the would-be musical I'll Do Anything, Barry Levinson with his behind- the-screen Jimmy Hollywood -- and what happens? A big nothing. The critics cluck; the public stays home in droves. One hates to see ambitious artists fail, even if their fizzles can be more provocative than the minor films that become major hits. But somehow these men became estranged from their audiences.

Could this fate befall James Cameron, Hollywood's most daring and extravagant auteur? Not bloody likely. An '80s-style artist-brigand, Cameron makes ripe allegories, often about the search for a redeemer, that are both personal and popular. The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day all took big risks, with film form and finance, that paid off. Cameron is a daredevil director: he goes skydiving without a chute and lands in clover.

Now he has produced an abrasive essay in gung-ho gigantism. True Lies is a remake of Claude Zidi's 1992 French film La Totale!, a teeny domestic farce about a spy (Thierry Lhermitte) whose neglected wife (Miou-Miou) thinks he works for the phone company. In Cameron's version, Schwarzenegger is the secret agent, Jamie Lee Curtis is his wife -- and the sky is the limit. Cameron has taken another out-of-favor genre (the James Bond thriller), welded it to romantic comedy and upped the ante until the fates of a marriage, the world and a few A-list reputations dangle in the balance.

If True Lies cost more than $100 million, so what? Hollywood frets when a huge-budget film is a flop (like Schwarzenegger's Last Action Hero) and purrs when one is a hit (like T2). As Schwarzenegger notes, "The press thinks movie studios should be reviewed like the government -- as if public money were spent and a crime committed. Well, it's not their money, it's the studios' money. Sometimes money is spent wisely, sometimes not. But it's like that in every business."

To Cameron, moviemaking isn't just a business, it's an adventure. "I like to keep challenging myself," he says, "so I try different things. And a lot of the things I like to try are expensive. I will say what I say about every budget: the price of a ticket is $7.50, and you're getting a lot of movie for it. End of story."

End of the budget story, anyway. The box-office story unfolds this weekend. True Lies will probably connect with the movie public; it delivers lots of ballistics for the buck. T2 dazzled with the computer magic of morphing, but the software used in True Lies is less noticeable than the hardware. Says Cameron: "There's nothing that gets the back of your mind screaming, 'That's impossible!' It's revolutionary technology in the service of a photorealistic end product." That translates into seamless digital imagery and nifty stunts. When a Harrier jet isn't flying around Miami, a villain is negotiating a breathless motorcycle leap from a hotel rooftop into an elevated swimming pool across the street. Things go boom in the night. Jamie Lee performs a striptease. Arnold hurts people. There's something for everybody.

Well, not quite everybody. For a viewer sympathetic to Schwarzenegger's and Cameron's best selves -- the ironist with muscles and the mordant fabulist -- True Lies is a loud misfire. It rarely brings its potent themes to life. And it seems not to realize that Harry is less a hero than a wife-abusing goon.

Fade in on one of those elegant parties that James Bond used to attend, then leave in rubble. Harry prowls about in a tuxedo; he speaks French, Arabic and a little English. He even tangos. Then he is pursued by the usual inept Middle East terrorists -- the ones with a quillion rounds of ammunition and lousy aim. He escapes with the help of spy's-best-friend Tom Arnold and arrives home, where Helen awaits him in sweet ignorance; she thinks Harry is a workaholic salesman for a computer company. Helen always waits; she is Penelope, unaware that she's married to Ulysses.

There ought to be a double resonance in this tale, for the story is about two kinds of mystery, two kinds of lies: domestic and cinematic. Married people may become so involved in their careers that they sink into a genial ignorance of each other's emotional lives. Moviegoers may become so seduced by the image on the screen that they forget their sainted star is likely to be an ordinary troubled oaf like themselves.

Cameron was eager to plumb these dark waters. "I liked the comedy potential of the lies, the facades, the allegory of relationships," he says. "For me, this movie is about the unknowability of people. And I loved the potential of Arnold playing the spy role. Arnold lives in a strange, dialectic world. On one hand, he's a family man; on the other, he's a superstar, which means that so much is expected of him." The role is oddly similar to Schwarzenegger's persona in Last Action Hero: someone who plays a superman at work but in the real world is stranded without a script. Harry is, after all, just a performer. Other agents are his directors; they tell him what to say, how to act, who to be.

At least, when Harry is playing the spy, he knows his part. But he doesn't know how to act like a good husband, or even a jealous one. When a sleazy salesman (Bill Paxton) brags that Helen is his mistress, Harry uses all his spy tricks to catch her in the act -- or lure her into it. The man who has no time to be with his wife does have time to prey on her, especially in the two- way mirror scene.

Schwarzenegger sees this stark encounter as Helen's chance for liberation: "During the interrogation, she says her life is boring. She needs excitement, to be at risk. My character realizes he hasn't given her the life she wanted, so he starts giving her the excitement right there. She was begging for it." To Cameron, the scene is open to several interpretations. "I want couples to argue about it afterward," he insists. "That's part of the fun."

Will audiences have fun at True Lies? Count on it. They will giggle at the embarrassment of Paxton's character, who is punished by having to pee in his pants -- twice. They will savor the spectacle of the delightful Curtis screaming in inane fear more often than any other actress since Fay Wray in King Kong. They will enjoy the lavishing and squandering of talent by Hollywood's shrewdest showman.

No question, you get a lot of movie for your $7.50. It's just not the right movie.

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles