True Lies is directed by James Cameron and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Harry Tasker, a man happily married to his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and has a teenage daughter named Dana (Eliza Dushku) but outside of this he leads a double life as a spy for the US Government, a double life that is about to collide.True Lies sadly is Cameron's weakest film as a director for me, as a huge fan of some of his work over years (Aliens, Avatar, Titanic and his 2 Terminator films) this one just feels like the 2nd cousin of his for the most part very good body of work as a director and as someone who loves his directorial style its somewhat sad for me to admit this fact.
Don't get me wrong there are things about the film I do like, Arnold delivers a solid performance, no doubt helped by having Cameron as director as does Grant Heslov, Tom Arnold (weird I know), Art Malik and Charlton Heston on backup support, the film's James Bond-esque opening is quite fun and the finale in Florida is actually pretty good though it does go on a bit too long.
But sadly the film has a big flaw in it and that is its female characters and the attitude against them all throughout the film, frankly I hated it and to me it also seemed downright wrong given that all throughout his work Cameron has always had strong female characters that stood toe to toe with their male counterparts (Neytiri in Avatar, Sarah Connor in Terminator and Ripley in Aliens are just a few examples) whereas here they're just there to be rescued, used as a screaming prop in the climax, spied on and the like and in all honesty I really thought Cameron was better than this, I really did but alas even director's you really like pull this sort of thing once in a while.
And so, True Lies is the one James Cameron film I don't rate very highly at all and it's very sad to say that given how much I admire his work as a director and how influential he's been on me over the years, 1 out of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment