True Lies (1994)

Directed by James Cameron

True Lies is your basic Arnold movie. Lots of things blow up and there is a generous sprinkling of one liners. It effectively has two storylines: the action storyline and the romantic-comedy storyline. They come together at the end. Things go, “Boom!”

More seriously, this movie is exactly what you would expect. It’s not great, but not bad either. It’s a bit long given that the premise is a bit dumb (although it allows for some comedy). The emphasis on action is so great, you wonder why they needed the premise to begin with since the comedy is fairly minimal (meaning, the ratio of action to comedy is like 10 to 1).

As for the DVD, the quality is pretty good but given other disks of Cameron films (the two Terminator films and especially The Abyss), the DVD leaves something to be desired both in terms of transfer quality and additional features.

The transfer is largely good but there are certainly places where it seems washed out or, conversely, over-saturated. As for features, there aren’t any. (As I’ve said before, for me language selection and trailers are not “features.”)

So all in all, True Lies is a good mindless time but I wouldn’t bust a hump rushing out to get it.

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