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Helen: Have you ever killed anyone?
Harry: Yeah, but they were all bad.

True Lies is a 1994 action comedy (bordering on Affectionate Parody) starring (of course) Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Action Hero, Jamie Lee Curtis as the wife, Eliza Dushku as their daughter, Tia Carrere as the Femme Fatale, Charlton Heston as Harry's boss, Bill Paxton as a sleazy womanizer, and Tom Arnold as Arnold's beleaguered partner. It's directed by James Cameron, meaning there are some sweet explosions. While it's hardly high art, it's good popcorn fun, mostly because it can't really decide whether it's trying to be an action movie or a parody of same, and so - possibly due to the infallible combination of Cameron and Schwarzenegger - does both pretty darn well. It was released on July 15, 1994.

Arnold plays Harry Tasker, who his wife thinks is a mild-mannered computer salesman; in truth, he's a top agent for the clandestine Omega Sector, the United States' "last line of defense". Helen, played by Curtis, resents the long "business trips" he takes, which make it hard for him to keep his appointments with the family. While Harry is off once more tracking a dangerous terrorist, he learns Helen has apparently been seeing someone on the side—a used car salesman pretending to be a spy.

He uses his agency's resources to teach the other man a lesson—and give his wife some adventure—but when a harmless "assignment" he sends Helen on is interrupted by the dangerous terrorists he was tracking, she finally finds out what he's really been doing on those business trips.

Despite both Cameron and Schwarzenegger wanting to make a sequel, plans were mired in Development Hell by both Arnold's political tenure and the September 11th attacks; there they eventually died. CBS has given an order for a TV series adaptation on May 2022. In 2023 a Spiritual Successor arrived in the Netflix serial FUBAR, also starring Schwarzenegger.

Based upon the 1991 French movie La Totale by Claude Zidi with Thierry Lhermitte, from which it kept most of the plot, transported it over to America, and ran it in typical Hollywood style which, honestly, tends to work pretty well for action comedy. It spawned a top-down shooter Licensed Game of same title on fifth-generation consoles and the Game Boy.


This film provides examples of:

  • 555: Monument Taxi has 555-2439. Another 800 number is written on their cars, too, for some reason.
  • Accent Relapse: When Harry is first introduced, he tries to pass off as an American. By the second half of the film, however, he slips into his natural Austrian accent after he takes the truth serum. It also helps that he's being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's possible that the American accent was part of his cover which is why once his wife knew the truth the American accent was out the window.
  • Accidental Aiming Skills: Helen's first experience with a Mac-10 involves taking out about half a dozen mooks when she fires and accidentally drops the gun down a set of stairs.
  • Actor Allusion: Harry works for the Omega Sector, whose leader is played by none other than Charlton Heston, The Ωmega Man himself.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: When he finds out that Simon is bullshitting spy stories — and taking credit for his own missions — to seduce Helen, even Harry thinks it's hilarious for at least a moment.
  • Adaptation Title Change: True Lies is a Foreign Remake of the French film La Totale.
  • Adrenaline Makeover: Frumpy Helen becomes faux-sexy while she believes she's Working Off the Debt, but the real adventure with her husband awakens something in her. By the end of the film, Helen is genuinely sexy, romance with Harry rekindled.
  • Adventurer Archaeologist: Juno Skinner is an antiquities dealer who uses her diplomatic connections to find and import artifacts from nations like Syria, Iraq, and Iran whose hostile relations with the West would make it difficult for more straight-and-narrow operators to acquire them. She mentions that her success with this has generated a fair amount of resentment for her from most of her peers (rightly so, as she turns out to be in league with terrorists).
  • Affectionate Parody: Of the Action Movie genre, up to that point in cinema history. Ironically, it's now considered a proper action movie in its own right. Also of Schwarzenegger himself, as well as James Bond movies.
  • All in the Eyes: Harry's eyes are the only thing lit during the hotel scene. At the very end, the lighting is adjusted so that Helen's eyes are highlighted like this when she gets the "Boris and Doris" phone call.
  • And Starring: The opening cast roll ends with "and Charlton Heston".
  • And the Adventure Continues: The movie ends with the Taskers working together on a new mission.
  • Animal Reaction Shot: After the horse refuses to make a suicidal jump, Arnie chides his 'partner' for letting him down. The horse looks away as if ashamed.
  • Apologetic Attacker: When pursuing Aziz through the town, Harry commandeers a mounted police officer's horse for pursuit. Though he legitimately declared himself and his intent ("Federal officer in pursuit of suspect!"), he did toss the officer off his horse, so he apologizes on his way out. As Harry pursues his foe on horseback, he apologizes repeatedly to crowds he barrels through.
  • Appropriated Appellation: At the end of the movie, Harry and Helen are using their Boris and Doris codenames for real.
  • Are You Sure You Can Drive This Thing?: When Harry decides to take the Harrier to rescue Dana, Gib is quick to point out that it has been 10 years since he's flown one. It shows in his takeoff, although if Gib's follow-up comments are anything to go by, Harry, always had problems with it.
  • Artistic License:
    • From the many action movie Rule of Cool impossibilities to having hi-rise buildings in Washington DC. note 
    • The janitor seen in one of the other buildings during the final action sequence. Obviously meant to generate laughs, because in Real Life, in a situation like that, the building would have been completely evacuated.
  • Artistic License – Geography: How did the terrorists get Dana to Miami for the climax? Salim doesn't find out about her until he finds Harry's wallet after the fuel truck explodes and he presumes Harry dead. The timeline of the setting of the bomb means that it is less than 90 minutes between when he learns about Dana and brings her to the Miami highrise. Even if he still had Crimson Jihad members in Washington D.C. to grab her, this is presuming that a rebellious teenager like Dana is home when both her parents are MIA (unlikely) of that a couple of Middle Eastern men with limited knowledge of the D.C. Metro area tracked down a 15 year old girl in the era of no cell phones and no social media (even more unlikely). Then after tracking Dana down they somehow got her on a plane that managed to fly 925 miles (1488 km) from Washington D.C. to Miami, FL in under 90 minutes. The plane would have to be going roughly Mach 1.25. The only civilian aircraft even capable of that was The Concorde, which discontined service between D.C. and Miami in 1991, three years before the movie came out. (Never mind the hassle of dragging a kidnapped, frightened, teenage girl through two major metropolitan air ports.) The only planes capable of making this trip in the continental United States would have been fighter jets. Not only is it extremely unlikely that terrorists could acquire such a jet, it's even more unlikely that they would be able to fly it if they could. Plus, a rogue fighter jet departing the capitol and landing in another major American city would have been tracked and shot down in very short order. Add all of it up and it was physically impossible to get Dana to Miami for the end of the movie.
  • Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Defied:
    • Marine Harriers attack a trio of nuke-carrying trucks. One of them asks for confirmation that the missiles won't set off the nukes, and Harry assures them that they won't. His expression to his partner after he says this, however, indicates he isn't as sure of this as he sounds. Since he is telling them to go ahead, he probably is aware that even if it is possible, it's extremely unlikely, and a chance well worth taking, weighed against the potential harm of the trucks getting away.
    • About a minute before the bomb detonates, law enforcement officers told people not to look in its direction, and the pilots of the Harriers landed their planes and shut down the engines, while Harry holds his hand over his eye so he could not see the blast in his peripheral vision.
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Lampshaded. Harry isn't paraphrasing when he translates the tail end of one of Aziz's speeches as, "Now no man can stop us. We are set on our course. No force can stop us, we're cool, we're badasses, blah blah blah blah." The actual line is literally just Arabic-sounding gibberish.
  • Asshole Victim: See the quote at the top. Given that Harry's under the influence of Truth Serum at the time, he must really believe it. And given that he fights terrorists and trigger-happy enemy agents, it sure seems like it could be true.
  • Auto Erotica: Zigzagged. When Simon and Helen are driving in his Corvette, Simon acts like they're being followed and pushes her head into his lap, telling her to "keep your head down until we're out of the city." While Helen doesn't actually take the bait, it looks awfully suspicious to Harry's surveillance team.
  • Automaton Horses: Harry's commandeered horse does not want to jump off of a hi-rise rooftop and Harry knows that it can't run forever.
    Harry: Make it quick. My horse is getting tired.
    Gib: Your horse?
  • Badass Adorable: Helen, a sweet and dorky legal secretary, who through an impeccable combination of dumb luck, enthusiasm and thirst for adventure, becomes a butt-kicking adventurer worthy of her formidable husband, while still remaining a huggable sweetheart by the end of it all.
  • Bad Boss:
    • Salim Abu Azir's Establishing Character Moment involves slapping his hired contractor twice in the middle of an ass-chewing. Doubles as Politically Incorrect Villain, given the obvious sexist undertones.
    • His men double as Bad Coworkers. Two of them fire a rocket without warning, resulting in their friend who was right behind it getting blasted through a windshield and run over. Rather than being horrified when they realize what just happened, they share a laugh.
  • Bathroom Brawl: Harry's first personal encounter with the Crimson Jihad and their leader Aziz starts with him fighting several mooks in a Mall's bathroom, then having to dodge gunfire when Aziz barges in with an AK-47, then chasing Aziz through the streets of Washington on a horse.
  • Bathroom Search Excuse: At the beginning of the film, after Harry infiltrates the party, he sneaks onto the closed-off second floor to plant a bug so that Faisil can hack the party's host computer. As he's sneaking out of the home office, he asks a nearby guard where the bathroom is because he has to "take a major leak." The guard seems to fall for it, but as soon as he's gone the guard calls for reinforcements.
  • Battle Couple: Harry and Helen become this in the film's final act.
  • Beast in the Building: Secret agent Harry Trasker commandeers a mounted D.C. officer's horse to chase a suspect through a mall and a hotel. At one point he even takes an elevator while astride the animal.
  • Beautiful All Along: Frumpy legal secretary Helen gives herself an impromptu makeover to transform herself into a Femme Fatale on a supposed spy mission.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted when Helen gives Skinner a good slap, leaving a minute cut on her cheek since her ring was diamond-side down.
  • Bed Trick: A variation, where Simon tries to seduce Helen under the pretense that they have to have sex for the sake of some top secret government mission. In reality, he's a used car salesman who has presumably been using this "secret agent" story to bed women for a unknown period of time.
  • Behind a Stick: A non-stealthy variation occurs when Butt-Monkey Gib is forced to step behind a lamppost when a terrorist opens fire on him. Despite said terrorist scoring several hits on the lamppost — and Gib being noticeably wider than it — he emerges unscathed when the terrorist runs off (though he does a quick body check to make sure everything is intact).
  • Between My Legs: This shot is seen during a sequence where Helen Tasker dances seductively for a supposed foreign criminal (who's really her husband in the shadow).
  • Big Bad: The Crimson Jihad leader Salim Abu Aziz serves as the film's main antagonist and is responsible for all the danger in this plot.
  • The Big Damn Kiss: Moments after Harry rescues Helen from the falling limo, the pair share a kiss just as the warhead on the island explodes.
  • Big Red Button: It's a key, not a button. Which allows Dana to steal it when Salim isn't looking, much to his consternation.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The part where Harry Blah Blah Blahs a Rousing Speech by Aziz. The first part of the rant literally is "We shall triumph over the evil Americans" and the rest is complete gibberish.
  • Billed Above the Title: For the making of this movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to get singled out, and requested Jamie Lee Curtis' name to be above the title as well.
  • Black Bra and Panties: The striptease involves black underwear after the character had been told to "dress sexy".
  • Black Comedy Rape: Simon's attempt at seducing Helen is played for laughs despite the fact that (a) she's clearly uncomfortable (b) it's essentially a Bed Trick—claiming that they have to have sex for the sake of some non-existent secret missionnote —and (c) he continues groping her even though she's telling him "No" and has to forcibly push him away to get him to stop.
  • Black-Tie Infiltration: Book ends the film.
    • In the Action Prologue, Harry Tasker infiltrates a gala hosted by an Arab underworld figure in Switzerland in order to steal Forensic Accounting intelligence from the mark's computer. In an homage to the opening of Goldfinger, he sneaks in underwater with a tuxedo under his drysuit.
    • In the epilogue, Harry and Helen are at a similar gala apparently looking to meet up with a contact.
  • Blah, Blah, Blah: Harry translates a Rousing Speech by Aziz as, "We are set on our course. No force can stop us now. We're cool, we're badasses, blah, blah, blah, blah." This is actually more or less literal.
  • Blaming the Cuckold: After missing his own birthday party because of a Chase Scene, Harry goes by his wife Helen's office to take her to lunch, only to overhear her talking about an affair she's having. When told about it, Gib tells him, "What'd you expect, Harry? She's a flesh-and-blood woman, and you're never there."
  • Blinded by Rage: In the final confrontation, Aziz is so determined to get Harry and Dana that he jumps onto a jet that Tasker was flying to get back the key that Dana had stolen, despite the fact that at the time he only had a knife and would therefore be incapable of making Harry take him somewhere 'secure'.
  • Blunt "Yes": There's a hilarious example when Harry and Helen are waiting to be executed by the terrorists; Harry explains to her that he's been injected with sodium pentothal, making him incapable of lying.
    Helen: So how do we know if it's working?
    Harry: Ask me something I'd normally lie about.
    Helen: Are we going to die?
    Harry: Yep!
    Helen: I'd say it's working.
  • Bond One-Liner:
    • Harry has one after giving a mook a swirlie.
      Harry: Cool off!
    • Harry has another one just before firing a missile that Aziz is hanging from.
      Harry: You're fired!
  • Bookends:
    • Gib has some frustrations about Harry's priorities while on a mission.
      Gib: You do not have time to tango!
    • There's also the opening scene of Harry under icy water, echoed near the end when he's under fiery water.
    • The family shares several strained dinners throughout the film but has a happy one at the end.
  • Boring, but Practical: We've all seen the hero disarm a bomb at the very last second by cutting the right wire or entering the deactivation code. How does Salim ensure that this won't happen to the nuke he left behind in the Florida Keys? By drowning the entire thing in cement after setting a ninety-minute timer.
  • Bottomless Magazines: As befitting a '90s action movie, reloading is typically something done for dramatic effect. Some particularly notable scenes:
    • During the bathroom shootout, Aziz fires a long burst at Harry on first entering the room, another long burst sweeping the row of stalls - leaving a good dozen or so bullet holes in each of the six doors - and two more bursts as Harry dives out of the last stall and returns fire. He does not reload until after he leaves the bathroom.
    • In the scene where Helen drops a MAC-10 down a flight of stairs, the gun is shown firing almost continuously as it tumbles - this after Helen is first seen wildly firing off 10-15 rounds in one long burst. Its magazine runs dry upon hitting the bottom step.
  • Brandishment Bluff: Helen Tasker brandishes a lipstick holder to the head of a wannabee spy, making him pee all over himself.
  • Breaking the Bonds: Harry surreptitiously picks a pair of handcuffs that bound his hands behind his back. This scene is more hilarious when you realize Harry has been pumped full of Truth Serum. And that despite having just told everyone in the room what he was going to do, he still succeeds in doing exactly that.
    Harry Tasker: First I'm gonna use you as a human shield, then I gonna kill this guard over there, with the Patterson trocar on the table. Then I was thinking about breaking your neck.
    Samir: And how are you going to do all that?
    Harry: You know my handcuffs?
    Samir: Hmm...
    Harry: [hold his hands up] I picked them.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Simon can't stop himself from peeing during stressful situations. It happens to him twice over the course of the film.
  • Brutal Honesty:
    • Gib to Harry regarding Helen's affair:
      Gib: What'd you expect, Harry? Helen's a flesh-and-blood woman and you're never there. It was just a matter of time.
    • Exploited by Helen to see if the truth serum on Harry is working. He tells her to ask him something he'd normally lie about.
      Helen: Are we going to die?
      Harry: Yep!
      Helen: I'd say it's working.
  • Bulletproof Human Shield:
    • Averted. When Aziz walks into the restroom with a gun and opens fire, Harry is in a perfect position for this... but instead he just leaves the unfortunate Mook to his doom and leaps for cover very quickly.
    • Later on, Harry uses the Torture Technician as a human shield after threatening to do so but only to make the guard in the room hesitate from firing rather than absorb bullets.
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Gib has to improvise and play catch-up when Harry goes off-script. Repeatedly. He gets shot at by Aziz and miraculously survives by hiding behind a lamppost, gets kicked in the balls by Helen and his long history of failed marriages is played for laughs. He's finally had enough at the end of the movie:
    Gib: You know what? I'm sick of being in the van. You guys gotta be in the van next time. I've been in the van for fifteen goddamn years, Harry.
    • Being the new guy, Faisil gets some of this too, though he gets his own action hero moment at the end of the movie when he guns down three Crimson Jihad members.
    Spencer Trilby: You're new on Harry's team, right?
    Faisil: Yes.
    Spencer Trilby: So what makes you think that the slack I cut him in any way translates to you?
    • Salim Abu Azir, however, surpasses both of them by several orders of magnitude. Both his attempts to give a dramatic speech are embarrassingly interrupted (the first one by the camera running out of battery, the second when the film crew notices that the key to his nuke is missing). In the climactic fight sequence, he's outwitted by a teenage girl, takes the rear end of a Harrier jet in the groin, and ends up hanging from a missile that's then fired into his men's helicopter.
  • The Cameo: Charlton Heston as Omega Sector boss Spencer Trilby.
  • Camping a Crapper: Harry baits Islamic terrorist Salim Abu Aziz and two of his mooks into following him into a mall restroom to kill him, whereupon he rapidly turns the tables on the mooks and then pursues Aziz.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: After it appears that the hero Harry has been killed, terrorist leader Aziz stops his paid ally Juno from shooting Harry's wife Helen on the grounds that they may need a hostage. It was nice of him though considering his attitude towards women.
  • Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: And, as Gib notes, can't kill them.
  • Cassandra Truth: Under the influence of truth serum, Harry tells the torturer exactly what he's going to do to him.
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: When Harry and his wife are tied up by the bad guys, she asks if they're going to die. Harry listlessly replies "Yep," then continues with "They're gonna shoot us in the head or they're gonna torture us to death or they're gonna leave us here when the bomb blows up..." Made better by his following it up with a Badass Boast said in the exact same tone. Note that the former was the set-up for the latter, establishing the fact that he was, in fact, unable to lie: "They've given me a truth serum." "Is it working?" "Ask me something you know I'd lie to." "Are we going to die?" "Yup!"
  • Cat Fight: Helen and Juno get into a pretty brutal version of this in the back of a runaway limo.
  • The Cavalry: The U.S. Marine Corps pilots towards the end. They don't finish off the enemy, but they take out two trucks each carrying a nuke, help Harry to rescue his wife, and provide the Harrier jet that allows him to rescue his daughter.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • The Persian statues seen in the opening are used to smuggle nuclear weapons to an island off the coast of Florida.
    • The transmitter planted in Helen's purse used to follow her. It comes in handy when Harry and Helen are kidnapped.
  • Chekhov's Skill: Early in the film, Dana uses her skills at small-time theft to steal money from Gib's wallet. Later in the film she uses those same skills to steal the detonation key for the nuclear warhead.
  • Climbing Climax: In the climax of the movie, Eliza Dushku steals the key needed to set off the bad guy's bomb, and then runs up the stairway, barricading herself in the building.
  • Combat Stilettos: Averted; Helen would rather take on terrorists barefoot than trying it in heels.
  • Concealment Equals Cover:
    • Played for laughs when Tom Arnold's character takes cover behind a lamp post against automatic fire; every bullet hits the post. Even he can't believe it (though it's perfectly plausible: an iron light post is more than enough to stop an AKS74U bullet, and the deduction of silhouette it provided against automatic fire is pretty substantial; moreover, the only parts that COULD be hit would be the agent's belly fat and butt fat).
    • Played straight in the opening chase sequence, where the bad guys' 5.56 rounds are stopped by a rather skinny softwood tree.
  • Conspicuous Trenchcoat: When Helen relates how she first met Simon, he's being followed by a couple of government-looking types, one in a trenchcoat. Given that Simon is not a suave superspy but actually a fraud trying to get into her pants, it's likely just her imagination working overtime.
  • Conversation Casualty: Harry Tasker test drives a used car with the lot owner, Simon. Harry gets Simon talking about the woman he seeing (Simon doesn't know the woman he's seeing is this guy's wife) and then kills him with one well-placed backhand. A moment later, we see it was in an Indulgent Fantasy Segue.
  • Cool Plane: A Harrier jet is overused to amazing effect in the last action scene of the film.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Terrorists traveling in panel vans, armed only with light weapons, are no match for Harrier jets.
  • Creator Cameo: Director James Cameron can be heard as the helicopter pilot who says "Oh yeah, she's got her head in his lap. Yahoo."
  • Da Chief: Spencer Trilby, head of Omega Sector played by Charlton Heston. Heston asked James Cameron why he cast him and his answer was "I need someone who can plausibly intimidate Arnold Schwarzenegger."
  • Damsel out of Distress:
    • Helen, for the entire movie, just shy of being an Action Girl. The first and biggest example? During the initial raid, while Simon is pleading and crying, she almost gets away from the trained operatives twice, by a well-placed knee to Gib's groin and biting Harry. Then, she almost spoils the following interrogation by breaking the glass with her stool. Later, she beats Harry to near-unconsciousness with a telephone, almost knocks him out later, and almost turns her Designated Girl Fight into a Curb-Stomp Battle with a champagne bottle.
    • It also seems to run in the family. Dana, her daughter, when faced with the entire rogue faction, not only manages to get away, she also swipes the nuke ignition key, and keeps it for the entire climax.
  • Dead Foot Leadfoot: Happens to the limo driver during the Florida Keys action sequence.
  • Dead Man's Trigger Finger: During the bathroom fight, Harry shoots one of Aziz's mooks several times in the chest in the middle of wrestling with the other one for control of the gun. The shot mook spastically lets off a burst from his submachine gun that goes nowhere important.
  • Dead Sparks: Harry is so oblivious to Helen that he doesn't even notice her making a crack about sleeping with the plumber. The ordeal revives things.
  • Deadfoot Leadfoot: The limo driver hits the gas permanently after getting shot in the head during Helen and Juno's fight on the bridge.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Everyone.
    • Harry has plenty of snark to throw at his teammates and the situations he is in.
      Harry: I'm just trying to get a better look at Beavis and Butthead over there.
    • Gib uses this to deal with Harry's antics.
      Gib: Care to tango?
      Faisil: Why, yes. Yes I would!
      [Gib and Faisil proceed to tango dramatically with vacant stares in the middle of their agency office.]
      Harry: Assholes.
    • Even the geeky Faisil has comments for his boss.
      Faisil: They call [Aziz] "the Sand Spider".
      Chief: Why?
      Faisil: [completely straight faced] Probably because it sounds scary.
  • Death Glare: In addition to the Kubrick Stares listed below, the car salesman gets this when Harry bursts into his hideaway and sees him apparently shtupping Helen. It's even more effective for Harry being in a ski mask, since the viewers can just see his gritted teeth and staring eyes.
  • Description Porn: Harry's description of the Soviet MIRV-6 is very technical and detailed.
  • Designated Girl Fight: Harry never fights Juno himself. That's for Helen to do.
  • Did the Earth Move for You, Too?: Harry and Helen make out to the backdrop of a nuclear explosion.
  • Dirty Harriet: Helen's first assignment as a "spy" is to pose as a high-class prostitute and meet with a suspected arms dealer who is actually Harry.
  • Disappointed by the Motive: While he's about to be tortured, Harry asks Juno why she's helping the terrorists. When she flippantly admits it's just for the pay-off she's going to get and that she doesn't care about the goals of either the Crimson Jihad or those of Harry, he calls her "damaged goods" and a "psychopathic bitch".
  • Disproportionate Retribution: When Helen is "arrested" by what is actually Harry's squad for allegedly cheating on Harry with Simon, she's given a choice: Work for Harry's "agency", or:
    Harry: You will go to a federal prison. And your husband and daughter will be left humiliated and alone. Your life will be destroyed.
    Helen: [sarcastic] Oh gee, lemme think.
    Harry: Yes, or no?
    Helen: Of course, yes.
  • Distressed Drink Jitters: The night after she was "kidnapped" by a shadowy intelligence organization, Helen nearly spills her drink with trembling when Harry comments about her getting home late the other night (she's unaware that Harry was the mastermind behind that operation and knows all about what happened).
  • Dive Under the Explosion: After Aziz fires his rocket launcher at the gas tanker, Harry dives underwater to avoid getting burned by the ensuing explosion.
  • Dramatic Deadpan: Harry telling how he'll kill everyone in the Breaking the Bonds scene.
  • Dramatic Drop: Inverted, as it's Played for Laughs: Helen, in her guide as substitute prostitute, sexy dances at the request of the guy Harry is pretending to be. He gets so engrossed and turned on watching her that he drops the tape recorder he's been using to feed her commands.
  • Dramatic Shattering: Harry smashes his van window when Gib refuses to give him the tenth page of the transcripts between Helen and Simon. The window was supposed to be stage glass but Arnold hit the wrong one by mistake; Tom Arnold's reaction isn't completely acted.invoked
  • Drives Like Crazy: Harry when test driving the sports car, partially to intimidate Simon.
    Simon: You mind keeping it under 90? I'm still trying to pay for this dental work.
  • Drugs Causing Slow-Motion: While Harry is under the effects of the truth serum, everything is slow and blurry when the camera cuts to his POV. When Helen talks to him, her voice sounds like a recording playing at half-speed.
  • Elevator Snare: Whether due to Rule of Cool or Rule of Funny, a terrorist taking a woman hostage enters an elevator [[motorcycle and all. Harry, The Hero, takes a second lift while mounting a horse. To hammer the hamminess, Harry is aiming his gun at the villain, which the latter can perfectly see since the walls are made of glass.
  • End of an Age: True Lies was one of the last of the 80s/early 90s-style action movies. It might even be considered an Affectionate Parody of the genre. Starting in the late 1990s, action movies began to get more serious and gritty, with heroes who looked like average guys instead of bodybuilders and storylines that were more grounded in realism.
  • Enemy Rising Behind: Behind the Big Bad, outside the skyscraper's windows, Harry rises piloting a Harrier jet.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Even snowmobiles make awesome explosions.
  • Evil Is Petty: After Juno taunts Helen about her husband Harry's likely death, Helen slaps her in the face, which leaves a scratch mark. Juno's response is to try to shoot her, but she's stopped by Aziz.
  • Evil Pays Better: Juno Skinner, who is aligned with the terrorists, is Only in It for the Money:
    Harry: Now why are you helping these raving psychotics?
    Juno: Because they're very well-funded raving psychotics.
  • Expository Hairstyle Change: At the end when Helen has become a spy too, her short hair has grown out long.
  • Expy:
    • The director of the Omega Sector, Spencer Trilby (Charlton Heston), was based upon Marvel Comics character Nick Fury. Both have eye patches, they have similar personalities, and both are leaders of an elite spy agency.
    • Harry himself is obviously one to James Bond, what with being an awesome, sexy, international spy with all sorts of amazing gadgets.
  • Eyepatch of Power: It is automatically clear that Spencer Trilby (Charlton Heston) is a badass even though he just sits at a table and talks, because he is played by Charlton Heston... and because he's wearing an eyepatch.
  • Eye Scream:
    • "...then I'm gonna kill that guard over there with that Patterson Trocar on the table..."
    • Charlton Heston's makeup is detailed enough to make it clear whatever's under his eyepatch must be very scary.
  • Failed Attempt at Drama: As Aziz gives a bombastic speech about nuclear destruction to an underling holding a video camera, the underling starts to sweat profusely because the camera's battery is running out. Finally, he has to interrupt the speech and say something, which he really doesn't want to do.
  • Faked Gift Acceptance: Harry gives his daughter a snow globe as a present. She thanks him, but as soon as he's away, she calls it a "really lame" gift and promptly throws it into the trash.
  • Fanservice Pack: When Helen "goes undercover" as a prostitute named Michelle. She arrives at the hotel wearing a modest dress. Through some Rip Tailoring she makes it sexier, pushes up her boobs and slicks her hair back with water. And her glasses go.
  • Father's Quest: During the second half, Harry got his facade off for his family after the bad guys kidnapped his daughter, so he must team up his wife (who recently discovered he's a spy) to get her back.
  • Firing in the Air a Lot: The Terrorists' celebration when they are arming the nuke, which handily covers up the actual gun battle Harry's engaged in.
  • 555: The phone number of Monument Taxi is either 555-2439 (which is on their sign and stickers), or the 800 number written elsewhere on the vehicle.
  • Flamethrower Backfire: Harry improvises a flamethrower out of a fuel truck, but his nemesis shoots the fuel truck... with a rocket-propelled grenade.
  • Flashed-Badge Hijack: Happens twice in the film even though Harry doesn't have a badge, due to being a secret agent, still invokes that his authority as a federal agent lets him do this. The first time is when he was chasing terrorist leader Aziz through downtown Washington D.C., Harry commandeers a horse from a mounted police officer to give chase when Aziz steals a motorcycle. The second time is that after finding out that the terrorists have kidnapped his daughter to use as a hostage with their nuclear warhead, Harry immediately commandeers one of the Harrier jets just used by the Marine Corps. when destroying the terrorists' trucks on the freeway.
  • Follow the Chaos: When Gib sees the smoking ruins of the island compound where Harry was being held, he comments to the latter:
    Gib: I thought this looked like your work.
  • The Foreign Subtitle: True Lies: The Chameleon in France.
  • Forensic Accounting: In the Action Prologue, the goal of Harry, Faisil, and Gib in infiltrating the mansion in Switzerland is to steal financial data from an Arab underworld figure for use in Omega Sector's counter-terrorism operations.
  • Foreshadowing: Simon's line about Helen: "But she could be so hot if she wanted to be" ends up being proven true a few scenes later when she does the sexy dance in lingerie for Harry.
  • French Jerk: Harry pretends to be a lecherous French arms dealer as part of his investigation of his wife. (The French agent helping Harry out by providing the dialogue isn't impressed).
  • Fun with Subtitles: Harry telling the one guard he must take a major leak, which the subtitle helpfully notes are "in perfect Arabic".
  • A Glass in the Hand: While watching Simon, the slimy used car salesperson, Harry grips the binoculars hard enough to break a lens. Bear in mind that the binocular lens had a durable plastic housing around them as well.
  • The Glasses Gotta Go: Helen does this to herself when she is prepping her sexy look during her undercover mission.
  • Government Agency of Fiction: Harry works for the Omega Sector, an elite intelligence/counter-terrorist agency whose very existence is kept secret from the public.
  • Gratuitous French: An allied French agent doing a voice-over for Harry's weapons dealer is not impressed by the script he was given.
    French-accented agent: Who wrote this shit? Harry? C'est de la merde!
  • Gratuitous Greek: Harry Tasker works for the top-secret Omega Sector.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The Crimson Jihad is being backed by billionaire Jamal Khaled, who supplied the funds for Aziz to purchase nuclear warheads from a former Soviet republic and to smuggle them into the United States. However, Harry and his guys don't run into him again after the Switzerland mission that opens the film.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: Helen's fight with Juno ends with Helen braining her a couple of times using a wine bottle. Surprisingly, the bottle holds up.
  • Groin Attack:
    • The only time you'll feel sympathy for Aziz is when he flies hard into the tail of the Harrier and is hit in the family jewels.
    • Helen also pulls one off in the kidnapping sequence. On Gib.
  • Guns Akimbo: Harry arms himself with two Mac-10s after breaking free of his restraints.
  • Gunship Rescue: Harry in the hover-capable Harrier fighter.
  • Hate Sink: Juno Skinner is the antiques dealer that Salim Abu Aziz and terrorist cell Crimson Jihad hire to assist them by means of using priceless artifacts to smuggle their four nuclear warheads into the country all because she is being well paid to help them succeed in it—one of which is nearly used later to kill two million people and the other just as a warning for the threat it imposes. She informs Aziz of the location Harry Tasker is staying at for his cover so Aziz and his men can ambush and kill him and later gleefully informs the abducted Harry of the torture he'll undergo so that Crimson Jihad can get answers about who he works for, making it a point to taunt his wife Helen about when she was flirting with him too. When Helen hits her later on for another taunt, Juno tries to spitefully shoot her, only keeping Helen alive as a hostage at Aziz's assistance. She then later tries to kill her in the back of her limo by means of either trying to shoot her or trying to strangle her during a heated fight.
  • Headphones Equal Isolation:
    • Harry tries to stop Dana, whom he caught stealing cash from his wallet, as she runs off with a boyfriend. She completely ignores him as "Sunshine of Your Love" is blaring on her headphones... and, y'know, because she didn't want to be stopped and caught.
    • The music-loving janitor is unaware of the conflict outside until the jet crashes through the window.
  • Hero Stole My Bike: Hero stole my horse! That is, Harry steals a DC police horse from an officer while pursuing Aziz on foot.
  • Heroic BSoD: Harry gets one when he finds out that his wife is having an affair with a used car salesman.
  • Hidden Weapons: Agent Faisil poses as a reporter to infiltrate the Crimson Jihad after they have taken over a building and kills several of them with an H&K P7M8 pistol hidden in his video camera.
  • High-Altitude Interrogation: Played with. When Harry and his fellow Omega Sector agents capture Simon, they take him to the top of a hydroelectric dam and threaten to throw him off. They're not after information, however; they know full well he's not a real spy and just want to scare him away from Helen.
  • High-Class Call Girl: Helen goes undercover as one of these as her first (unofficial) mission for the Omega Sector.
  • Homage: The opening sequence features Arnold coming out of some water in a wetsuit, then shrugging it off to reveal a black tuxedo underneath. Now, what another superspy has done that...
  • Homemade Flamethrower: While battling the Crimson Jihad in their base, Harry creates a makeshift flamethrower by starting the pump on a fuel truck and firing one of his MAC-10's into the spray to ignite it.
  • Honest John's Dealership: Simon, the loser who tries to seduce Helen, is a used-car salesperson. This is mostly just to immediately establish him as a sleazeball through inference, since from what little we see of it it appears that his business is legit. Upon finding out about the "affair" his wife is having, Harry pays him a visit to scope him out, but Simon does not attempt to rip him off.
  • Horseback Heroism: Set up but subverted when Harry's mount flat-out refuses a Horse Jump from one building to another.
    Harry: What kind of a cop are you, anyway?
  • Horse Jump: Subverted when Harry tries to follow Big Bad Aziz (who had made a motorcycle jump into a pool several stories down), but the horse balks and stops short, pitching Harry off the saddle and almost to his death.
  • Horsing Around: When the police horse Harry is using to chase a terrorist flat out refuses to jump a gap between skyscrapers, it almost dumps him over the edge.
  • Hypocrisy Nod: Harry knows how dirty they usually play things and uses it to get around objections.
    Harry: Put a tap on her phone.
    Gib: What? I already did that.
    Harry: I'm talking about Helen's. Put a tap on her office line and the house. Now.
    Gib: Come over here for a second. That sounds great. I want to ask you about something. I got two words to describe that idea: In-sane. An unauthorized wiretap's a felony. You know that.
    Harry: [pushes him against a wall] And you're doing it twenty times a day! ...so don't give me that crap. Do it.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Every insult Juno hurls at Helen would be more appropriate if used against Juno herself. Apart from the "Suzy Homemaker" quip.
  • I Have Your Daughter: It's revealed that Dana is being held prisoner in the film's third act.
  • I Just Want to Be Special: Helen, feeling unappreciated by Harry and trapped in a mundane lifestyle, longs for something exciting to happen in her life, which draws Simon to her as he's learned to exploit this need in married women. She gets her wish by becoming a spy at the end.
  • I'm Going to Hell for This: Gib says "I'm gonna go to hell" while he's sending Helen on her "mission".
  • I Resemble That Remark!: Harry and Simon have this conversion when discussing how Simon choses the women he has an affair with:
    Simon: The trick is, you gotta' pick your target. They have to be nice little housewife types, school-teachers. But, I'm telling you, you get their pilot lit, these babes, they can suck-start a leaf-blower.
    Harry: What about the husbands?
    Simon: Dickless! [laughs] If they took care of business, I'd be out of business! 'Know what I mean?
    Harry: Those idiots.
  • Idiot Ball: Harry grabs it by using his "Harry Rhenquist" I.D. at the hotel where he'd planned his romantic interlude with Helen... which allows Juno and her terrorist buddies to track Harry down and capture him and his wife. If he'd just used a new fake I.D. and credit card, they'd never have found him.
  • Imagine Spot: Harry briefly imagines hitting Simon hard enough in the face to kill him while doing a test drive.
  • Impairment Shot:
    • When Harry and Helen are captured, they're both drugged. Harry lasts five seconds longer and we get a POV shot of his view going blurry and dark.
    • While in the clutches of the terrorists, Harry looks up at the torture specialist. We see him all blurry, but Harry has mostly shaken off the sodium pentothal.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Played for laughs when the fat Gib hides behind a lamp post while being shot at with an AK-47, and remains unharmed, despite the pole and everything behind him being hit repeatedly. Even he can't believe it.note 
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: Harry has several instances of this with a regular pistol including shooting a pair of skiing mooks while he was sliding down a snowy hill on his back.
  • Indecisive Parody: The movie is either a 90's action comedy, or a parody thereof.
  • Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Tasker imagines smashing in Simon's face while Simon describes his most recent lay (Harry's wife).
  • Instant Sedation: When Harry and Helen are drugged, they each fall asleep five seconds after being injected.
  • Instant Thunder: The atomic blast is seen long before we hear its relatively faint rumbling. Understandable as they're at least 12 miles away, which is stated to be the minimum safe distance, though it still took a lot less than a minute for the sound to hit.
  • Invincible Hero: Considering this is an Arnold movie, subverted, especially since Jamie Lee Curtis beats him to near-unconsciousness in one scene, and later decks him hard.
  • Ironic Echo:
    • During the interrogation scene, Helen is pressured into telling the truth about whether she did anything with Simon. Later, while Helen and Harry are held captive by Aziz’s men, Helen asks Harry whether he did anything with Juno.
    • After the Crimson Jihad have buried an armed nuclear warhead in the Florida Keys and are traveling by auto to Florida, Helen - who at this point thinks Harry is dead - is riding in a limousine with Juno, who taunts her over a glass of champagne; "Want one?" Shortly after that, Harry and company attack the Jihad to keep them from reaching the mainland with their remaining bomb, and in the chaos that follows, Helen - with the aid of the champagne bottle - gives it right back to Juno:
      Helen: Want one?! [WHACK!] How about two?! [WHACK!]
  • Just Between You and Me: Harry does this while bound to a chair, and under the effect of truth serum, just as Samir prepares to inject him with him poison. So they don't take him seriously until he demonstrates his ability to do what he promised.
  • Just Plane Wrong: The way the Harrier is depicted has many, many errors. A Harrier overheats if it hovers for more than 90 seconds without refilling its cooling tank. It isn't bulletproof, and would not be flyable if it got its instrument panel shot up. Dana would have gotten sucked into its turbines while clinging to its side. Shooting up a truck wouldn't have just put a few holes in it, it would have completely and utterly disintegrated it. And so on...
  • Karmic Death: Juno gets hers when the limo falls off the recently destroyed bridge after the scuffle between her and Helen.
  • Kill It with Fire: Harry turns a fuel truck into a flamethrower by shooting the end of the hose, killing most of Aziz's men in the process.
  • Kubrick Stare:
  • Kung-Shui: There's a fairly amusing bathroom fight scene. After Harry and his foe had taken the fight elsewhere, an old man emerges from a toilet stall with an expression of shock and bewilderment.
  • Large Ham: Art Malik's portrayal of Aziz is (perhaps deliberately) over-the-top.
  • The Last Straw: A teetering car goes over the edge thanks to a bird landing on the hood.
  • Law of Inverse Recoil: Averted with Helen when she fires a burst from a MAC-10, is forced to stagger backwards and ultimately drops the weapon to surprisingly useful effect.
  • Lethal Klutz: Played for laughs when Helen accidentally kills a group of terrorists while trying to fire a MAC-10 to save Harry. The recoil causes her to lose control and fumble the weapon, sending it tumbling down the stairs in a slow-motion montage sequence where it continues to fire, taking out several mooks.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: Faisil, the geeky junior agent, gets to have a moment of true badassery. Faisil is skinny, inexperienced, geeky, and absolutely the type of character who usually ends up a Sacrificial Lamb. He ends up taking out three of the terrorists by himself in a smooth bit of gunplay that ends with him blowing across the end of his gun, James Bond-style after walking into the terrorist's den disguised as a TV cameraman.
  • Lighter and Softer: True Lies is just as violent, but a lot less dark compared to the last collaboration between Schwarzenegger and James Cameron, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, having a stronger emphasis on being plain popcorn-munching fun and self-aware humor.
  • Lip-Lock Sun-Block: Harry blocks out the flash from a nuclear blast on his profile with his hand while making out with his wife.
  • Little Black Dress: Double Subversion. Helen's dress is horribly out of date (which is against the purpose of the dress), but then she rips off the frills when she sees that is the case, making the dress fit properly.
  • The Makeover: At the start of the film, Jamie Lee Curtis is made to look like a dowdy suburban housewife. Towards the middle, she loses the glasses, slicks back her hair, and rips off the ruffles of her dress, transforming into the Femme Fatale.
  • Masquerade: Harry needs to maintain this to protect his spy agency and himself in the name of national security.
  • The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: One of Helen's reasons for dating Simon. She quickly comes back when she realizes who Harry really is.
  • Mating Dance: The tango scenes, which was actually an attempt by Harry to evade the bad guys despite his flirtatious banter with Juno (because they couldn't shoot him in a room full of people). Harry's partner puts it quite succinctly after he's done dancing with her that she's ready to have his kids.
  • Meaningful Look: The movie features maverick agent Harry Tasker piloting a Harrier jet. His daughter is clinging to the nose cone (an improvised rescue) while the Big Bad stands on one wing with a pointed firearm. Harry rolls his eyes to his right as a signal to his daughter that he's going to roll the jet. The girl is ready for this move, and doesn't fall off; the Big Bad misses the signal and topples off the edge.
  • Middle Eastern Terrorists: The Crimson Jihad group. Notably, they predate The War on Terror time period.
  • Missing Backblast: Averted when one of the terrorists fires a Stinger shoulder-fired anti-air missile from a moving panel truck, causing no end of havoc. His comrades even knew it was coming.
  • Mission Control: Tom Arnold's character, Gib, is eventually fed up with this role.
    Gib: Y'know what? I'm sick of being the one in the van. You guys are gonna be in the van next time.
  • Modeling Poses: Helen does a pose to make sure her outfit looks sexy enough after altering it.
  • Mood Whiplash: One of the best comedic moments in the scene occurs when Aziz's villainous threat recording is interrupted due to technical difficulties.
    [Mook shakily lowers his dead camcorder]
    [Aziz gestures in exasperation as his speech is ruined]
    Mook: Battery, Aziz!
    [Aziz closes in on the mook]
    Aziz: Get another one, you moron!
    Mook: I think I have another one, in the truck.
    [Aziz shushes the mook, barely containing his anger]
  • Ms. Fanservice:
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Crimson Jihad. Lampshaded with Aziz's moniker:
    Faisil: They call him "The Sand Spider."
    Spencer: Why?
    Faisil: Probably because it sounds scary.
  • Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Crimson Jihad is a terrorist group that is considered vicious and brutal even by Islamic terrorist standards.
    Faisil: Now he's formed his own splinter faction called Crimson Jihad.
    Gib: Yeah, I guess he thought the other terrorist groups were a little too warm and fuzzy for his tastes.
  • Neck Snap: Harry goes to town on the jihadis with this.
  • Never-Forgotten Skill: Double Subverted and Played for Laughs. When Gib says Harry can fly a Harrier jump-jet, despite reportedly not having touched one for ten years. For extra points, he says this to the actual pilot of the Harrier. Harry has some trouble at first, crushing the roof of a police car with his nose gear ("Sorry!") and sending the onlookers scrambling for cover with his thrusters, then gets the hang of it and heads off for Miami.
    Harry: If I break it, they can take it out of my pay.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It is entirely possible that when Harry pulls the surveillance assets off Crimson Jhiad to go after his wife, it gave them the window they needed to get clear and in turn track down and kidnap both he and his wife later.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed:
    • Averted with Carlos the Jackal, the terrorist Harry and Gib pretend to misidentify Simon for in order to scare him. He was a real terrorist and the most wanted man in the Western world before the rise of Osama Bin Laden.
    • Played straight with the Commerce Bank International, "which we all know is a front for certain countries to finance terrorist activities." This is almost certainly a reference to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a British/Pakistani bank that was being investigated at the time of the movie's release for massive money laundering and other crimes linking them to various dictators, drug cartels, terrorists and other unsavory factions.note 
  • No Endor Holocaust: The heroic couple kiss passionately as a nuke goes off in the background. Never mind that a huge area in the Florida Keys will now be completely uninhabitable for many many years, with the entire South Florida marine ecosystem completely compromised and likely to contaminate the entire Gulf of Mexico if not the Everglades or Eastern Seaboard. None of this is addressed in the film after the nuke goes off.
  • Noisy Nature: Harry's commandeered horse neighs and snorts at every gesture.
  • Noodle Incident: When Gib is trying to convince Harry not to pull agents off routine surveillance to follow Helen and Simon.
    Harry: You tell on me, I tell on you.
    Gib: Whatya talking? I'm as clean as a preacher's sheets, babe. Clean as a—
    Harry: What about that time you trashed a six-week operation because you were busy getting a blowjob?
    Gib: [aghast] You know about that?
    [Harry quietly guffaws. Beat]
    Gib: Okay, let's take Franklin. It's a lot quicker.
  • No Sympathy: Downplayed, Gib is helpful towards Harry's attempts to repair his marriage, but he doesn't make much effort to sensitive or tactful about it and has to be blackmailed into going along with it past a certain point (although this is also because it involves misusing work resources). Justified, given that he's been through the same thing himself and, as shown by his line under Brutal Honesty, he's much more conscious of the kind of strain spy work can put on a marriage.
  • Not Hyperbole: Harry Tasker explains how he will escape being tied up and kill his captors while on truth serum. They really shouldn't have been surprised at what happened.
  • Not So Above It All: Gib gleefully mocks Harry's anger over his wife's apparent infidelity, but ends up losing his temper during Helen's interrogation scene and has to be restrained by Harry.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: In his (unfortunately interrupted) speech, Aziz makes this point:
    Aziz: You have killed our women and our children, and bombed our cities from afar, like cowards, and you dare to call us terrorists?!
  • Not What It Looks Like: Helen just wants some excitement and isn't really cheating, but Simon pulling Covert Pervert stunts like getting her to rest her head on his lap, ostensibly to avoid surveillance, aren't helping because they really are under surveillance by an Omega helicopter pilot who gleefully jumps to the wrong conclusion in relaying the scene to Harry.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Harry has to do this several times, but it borders on ridiculous when he calls a nuclear warhead an espresso machine, a snow-cone maker, and a water heater in succession just to keep his (obviously blown) cover in front of his wife. But it at least annoys his captor.
  • Oblivious Janitor Cut: The Janitor doesn't notice the jet flying around outside until it crashes into the window.
  • Offering Another in Your Stead: When the SWAT team arrests Helen and Simon, the latter can be heard begging them to take Helen instead of him as a further demonstration of what a colossal Slimeball Simon is. By contrast, when Harry and Helen are placed in a similar situation when they are captured by terrorists, Harry tries to get them to release Helen by offering himself.
  • Offhand Backhand: Harry fantasizes about using this to kill Simon.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • The look on Samir's face after Harry reveals that he's picked the lock on his handcuffs and is about to do everything he said he would.
    • Harry has one when Aziz is about to use a rocket launcher on the gas tanker he is currently weaponizing.
    • Then there was the much-abused terrorist panel truck balanced on the edge of the broken bridge. They balance it out and start celebrating... then a pelican lands on the hood of the truck.
    • Helen when she realizes that the bridge has been shot out shortly before Harry rescues her. Seconds later, Juno says "oh, SHIT!" before her limo falls into the ocean.
    • The Mook gets a wordless one when his view is obstructed by Harry who rises in front of him with a Harrier jet.
    • Aziz himself gets one when the missile fired from the Harrier is about to collide with the helicopter containing his henchmen.
  • Only in Florida: The bridge that gets blown up by the fighter jets is the original 7-Mile Bridge that linked the Florida Keys to the mainland. It was replaced by a newer bridge back in the 80s and had already been cut into pieces to allow sailing ships through-ways. Several sections of the old bridge are now used as fishing piers, and the rest are being allowed to fall apart to form artificial reefs.
  • Only in It for the Money: Juno Skinner is only aiding the terrorists in exchange for an enormous amount of money. This includes enduring slaps to the face.
  • Open Air Driver: While saving his daughter in the climax, Harry Tasker has the windshield of his borrowed harrier get gunned off. It actually comes in handy for his daughter, who is hanging on to the damn jet for dear life, to have something to hold onto while he flies around.
  • Overt Operative: Harry Tasker. He does tend to stand out in a crowd. Except his own wife of 15 years had never even suspected him about his double life.
  • Pædo Hunt: Simon describes Helen as having an "ass like a 10-year-old boy", as if his sleaziness wasn't enough. That explains why Harry decided to imagine smashing his face in.
  • Papa Wolf: When his daughter is kidnapped, Harry borrows the aforementioned Harrier Jet to rescue her and face the Big Bad.
  • Parting-from-Consciousness Words: When Aziz's men tranquilize Helen.
    Helen: That hurt, you bi[thud]
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Harry at least believes to only have killed people who deserved it.
  • Pin-Pulling Teeth: Harry uses his teeth to pull a grenade's safety pin and throws it at the gas drums as the opening of a huge firefight at the enemy's hideout after escaping from being captured.
  • Police Are Useless: Harry knocks a policeman off his horse and steals the horse to chase after Aziz. Not only does the policeman not even try to stop him, but he never calls for back up after police property (the horse) has been stolen. Add the fact that there is a mass shootout in a mall bathroom, and Harry riding said horse through the mall where Aziz is holding a woman hostage, and not a single police officer is seen.
  • Pop-Cultured Badass: Harry is tailed by two of Aziz’s henchmen on the night of his birthday and offhandedly nicknames them Beavis and Butthead when discussing a strategy with Gib before leading said henchmen into a fight inside a mall's bathroom.
  • Pre-emptive Declaration: This scene with Harry pumped full of Truth Serum:
    Harry Tasker: First I'm gonna use you as a human shield, then I gonna kill this guard over there, with the Patterson trocar on the table. Then I was thinking about breaking your neck.
    Samir : And how are you going to do all that?
    Harry: You know my handcuffs? [hold his hands up] I picked them. (proceeds to exactly as he foretold!)
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: It's a Schwarzenegger film, so it has a number of them, including one when shooting the Big Bad from a missile.
    Harry: You're fired!
  • Precision F-Strike: Helen almost melts down during her interrogation when asked why she was having an alleged affair.
    Helen: I was reckless and I was wild, and I fucking did it!
  • Pretty in Mink: Several furs are worn in the background of a few scenes that take place at fancy galas and high class hotels.
  • Product Placement: Canon camera with a gun in it. Part of a chase scene happens in a Marriott hotel. Also, when transiting back to Washington DC after the infiltration in Switzerland, the footage of the landing plane is of an American Airlines plane (the AA logo is not shown, but the fuselage stripes are a giveaway). American tickets are also featured in two scenes where Simon is using them as props (in his trailer & his briefcase).
  • Progressively Prettier: In the epilogue, Helen's mousy appearance has become more glamorous. She's no longer wearing glasses and her hair is longer. Presumably, she's expected to be more glamorous as a spy.
  • Prove I Am Not Bluffing: The Crimson Jihad set off one of their nukes in the Florida Keys as a demonstration.
  • Punch a Wall: Harry punches through a car window in a fit of anger. But Arnold mistakenly hits a real window instead of the Soft Glass he was supposed to break, so the ensuing expression of surprise from co-star Tom Arnold is quite real.invoked
  • Punctuated Pounding: Helen attacks the one-way mirror that Harry and Gib are using during their interrogation of her with her stool.
    Helen: NO! I DID [slams glass] NOT [slam] SLEEP [slam] WITH HIM!!! [slam slam]
    Gib: I think maybe she's telling the truth.
  • Put Their Heads Together: Harry's Action Prologue have him knocking out a pair of Angry Guard Dogs by knocking their craniums in one.
  • Questionable Consent: The striptease scene with Helen. Helen is, so she's been told, undercover as a High-Class Call Girl, but is told by her handler (Gib using a voice-changer) that her contact is a voyeur. She performs a striptease dance for the contact without knowing it's Harry, and is then told to "lie down on the bed and close your eyes", whereupon Harry indeed does attempt to have sex with her. Technically, Helen's orders from Gib were to plant a bug, not to have sex with the contact, but she was told that if she failed her mission she'd go to federal prison—and braining her contact with a hotel telephone for trying to have sex with her would certainly ruin a cover as a prostitute and therefore could have been construed as failing the mission, had it not been her own husband setting her up in a poorly-thought-out attempt to fulfill a fantasy on her part.
  • Ramp Jump: The Big Bad motorcycle jumped across from a taller building to a swimming pool of a shorter building to escape from Arnold's character on a horse.
  • Red Baron: The terrorist leader Salim Abu Aziz is known as the "Sand Spider"
    Spencer Trilby: Why [is he called that]?
    Faisil: Probably because it sounds scary.
  • Reliably Unreliable Guns: Helen attempts to use a MAC-10 machine pistol and promptly loses control of it and drops it down a flight of stairs, where it continues firing all by itself as it tumbles down, taking out nearly every mook in the terrorist camp. Also the Accidental Aiming Skills. Partially a case of Truth in Television, as the MAC-10 is known for occasionally going "runaway" when dropped. During the making of the movie, the production team was even trying to find a way to get the gun to do exactly that. Their eventual solution? Just load it up and throw it down some stairs. Of course, there's no way it would fire for that long.
  • Renegade Splinter Faction: The Crimson Jihad to a larger, unnamed terrorist group. Unlike other examples of the trope, the point here is to show that Aziz was even more fanatical than other fanatics:
    Faisil: Now he's formed his own splinter faction called Crimson Jihad.
    Gib: Guess he thought the other terrorist groups were too warm and fuzzy for his tastes.
  • Riding the Bomb: The villain, in quite a phallic manner, as the helicopter carrying it takes off for Miami. Later, he rides a missile.
  • Rip Tailoring: Helen rips off the frilly sleeves and collar of her dress, and shortens it considerably when preparing to unknowingly meet Harry, who's pretending to be a black-market arms dealer.
  • Rule of Cool: Multiple examples, but one that particularly stands out is when Harry is being chased down a hill through trees by guys on skis firing guns (that are held with both hands). While Harry manages to shoot most of them with his Improbable Aiming Skills, they rarely run into anything. However, there is a snowmobile crash, which causes an explosion.
  • Rule of Funny:
    • Gib checks himself over to make sure he is intact, including his groin, in about three seconds after using a lamppost for cover from an AK-47.
    • The runaway MAC-10 killing several mooks but leaving the heroes unharmed.
  • Running Gag: "Sorry!" Said by Harry after he does various things like steal a horse from a mounted police officer, ride said horse through a luxury hotel, and pancake a police car with the nose gear of a Harrier jet while taking off.
  • Sarcastic Confession: Harry gives a beat-for-beat explanation about how he is going to escape torture while under the influences of a truth serum.
  • Searching the Stalls: Tasker hides from a gun-wielding terrorist inside a bathroom stall. The terrorist hoses down the stalls with his machine gun, and begins opening each stall. Before he gets to Tasker's hiding place, Tasker bursts out of his stall and escapes.
  • Semper Fi: USMC Harriers engage and destroy a pair of terrorist trucks transporting nuclear weapons along the Overseas Highway. After that, Harry borrows one to kill the rest. The dialog implies that he had experience with Harriers which in turn implies that he has had access to Harrier training, possibly as a Marine pilot.
  • Serial Escalation: Harry goes from mowing down a bunch of mooks in an escape sequence down a mountain on foot, to leading a chase sequence on horseback, eventually to take out the remaining terrorists in a hi-rise while flying a Harrier jet.
  • Serial Homewrecker: Simon's role in the film is to get Helen to have an affair. While talking to Harry (who he doesn't know is Helen's husband), he explains his strategy is to seek out married women with occupied husbands and pretending to be a secret agent to impress them. In reality, he's a Casanova Wannabe who runs an Honest John's Dealership and lives in a trailer.
  • Shoot the Hostage Taker: A bad guy uses Helen as a human shield while telling Tasker to drop his gun. Tasker drops the rifle in his left hand but reveals he has a handgun in his right hand, which he immediately uses to shoot the bad guy between the eyes. It prompts the 'I married Rambo' reaction from Helen.
  • Shout-Out:
    • When Harry's disguised voice identifies Helen's contact as "Boris" and starts to identify her, she pipes up, "Natasha?"
    • After Harry demonstrates his fighting chops to Helen, she blurts out, "My God, I married Rambo!" Arnold and Sylvester Stallone tease each other a lot in their movies.
    • Harry's 'tuxedo under a diving suit' method of infiltrating a party at the beginning of the film was done by Sean Connery's Bond at the beginning of Goldfinger.
  • Sinister Tango Music: Played with. Harry has a weakness for the Tango and dances it with his sexy but evil target. At the end, he dances another with the wife he loves, inconveniencing their partner in the van.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: Harry and Helen eventually reconcile after she finds out he is a spy.
  • Slipped the Ropes: Harry does this in the interrogation scene, right after telling his interrogator how he's going to kill him.
    Harry: You know my handcuffs?
    Samir: Mmm-hmm.
    Harry: [holds up his hands] I picked them. [proceeds to do exactly what he just said he would]
  • Small Role, Big Impact: Bill Paxton’s turn as Simon, which is just over 10 minutes, is a hilariously memorable one.
  • Soft Glass:
    • Several scenes feature this trope, but the best one is when Harry insists that Gib hand him the missing page of the transcript, and shatters the car window with his bare fist. Funny story: Schwartzenegger was actually supposed to break a different window, which had been replaced with safety glass. Adds a bit of weight to the look on Tom Arnold's face, when he sees that his co-star just broke a real car window with his bare fist.
    • Surprisingly averted in the Designated Girl Fight when Helen hits Juno with a champagne bottle a couple of times and the bottle remains intact.
  • Soft Water: After a shootout in a mall, the main villain rides a motorcycle to the roof of a hotel, then drives it off the edge and splashes down in the pool on the roof of a building across the street. Considering his parabolic arc, the drop must have been at least a hundred feet, but he's uninjured and impaired only by a sopping wet trenchcoat. The horse that Arnold Harry Tasker rides in this chase makes this "you've GOT to be kidding me" look when Harry tries to make him follow and stops just short of the edge, pitching Harry out of his seat and causing him to dangle precariously.
  • Son of a Whore: In a throwaway line in the opening mission, Faisil mentions that he was born in a whorehouse.
  • Spent Shells Shower: Salim Abu Aziz rakes a public restroom's stalls with dakka from a sub-machine gun, littering the floor with spent casings.
  • Spies Are Lecherous:
    • Subverted Trope. Harry Tasker is a spy whose cover identity on his latest Black-Tie Infiltration mission is a rich lothario, with the villainess even falling for his charms (and an intense tango). However, in his civilian life he's been married to the same woman for over a decade and is completely loyal to her. The B-plot of the film is about Harry discovering that his wife Helen is very unhappy with her boring life and making efforts to rekindle their marriage.
    • Gib tries to talk him out of using agency resources to follow his wife (because he thinks she's going out with another man, who is pretending to be a spy) and says he may need to warn their boss about this mismanagement, only for Harry to threaten him with information of an operation Gib botched because "he was busy getting a blowjob". Gib instantly starts helping Harry.
  • Spy's Suspicious Spouse: Inverted as Harry is the one suspecting his spouse of cheating, while Helen completely believes Harry's cover stories for being gone all the time and never suspects anything odd about it, she's only only frustrated that he is gone all the time.
  • Spy-Tux Reveal: Harry pulls off the wetsuit version when infiltrating the party in the opening scene.
  • Start My Own: The Big Bad started the Crimson Jihad terrorist organisation after he felt that the other terrorist networks he worked for weren't extreme enough for him. His plan involves holding the United States to ransom with nuclear weapons.
  • Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: The stealth infiltration at the beginning of the film becomes a guns blazing exit after the guards ask for Harry's invitation. Which of course he doesn't have because he came in via scuba gear.
  • Stealth Parody: It's closer to an Affectionate Parody as it gently pokes fun at the excesses of 80's and 90's action flicks while indulging in those excesses itself. Pointed out by a shocked Helen: "My God, I married Rambo!!"
  • Stealth Pun:
    • Probably unintentional, but the song that is used for the tango scenes, "Por una Cabeza", was about a compulsive horse racing gambler and how he compares his addiction to horses with his attraction to women. Not long after that, we have the horse/motorcycle chase.
    • The flying sequence at the end of the movie. Harry is flying a Harrier jet.
  • The Stinger: In a mid-credits scene, Gib complains that he's tired of always being the guy in the van, and says that next time he's going to make Harry be the guy in the van.
  • Super-Detailed Fight Narration: Harry gives a detailed account on how he's going to escape from, and kill his captors, after being given a truth serum.
  • Surprise Vehicle: The Harrier jet is not something the terrorists prepared themselves for.
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Salim seems to think so, but he himself isn't exactly the brightest bulb in the box.
  • Swirlie: Harry Tasker subdues a terrorist with one of these:
    Harry: Cool off.
  • Tagline: "When he said 'I do', he never said what he did."
  • Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: The movie combines this with The Last Straw (and plays it for laughs) as a car full of terrorists totters on the edge of a bridge. They have just enough time to start cheering before a pelican lands on the hood of the car and unbalances it.
  • Take My Hand!: How Harry plucks Helen out of the limo speeding off the edge of a blown bridge.
  • Talk to the Fist: A scene pulls a variation on this, when Harry and Alan confront Simon, a humiliated con-artist that previously attempted to sleep with Harry's wife. They leave him on a dam in his underwear, where he's certain they will kill him.
    Simon: You're going to kill me, aren't you?? You're just... I'm gonna get shot aren't I? I know it, I'm gonna get shot!! You're gonna shoot me! Well shoo—
    Alan: Get lost, Dipshit. [starts shooting at his feet]
  • The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Played with. Harry has a tape recorded for Helen's "secret mission" with a series of commands so he won't have to use his own voice and give himself away. It works for a few simple commands (unzipping her dress, dancing), and even accounts for Helen being somewhat awkward and having to correct her, instructing her to do it in a more sexy way. Subverted when it says to slide her nylons off — she isn't wearing any. Harry has to hastily fast-forward a bit to get to the next part.
  • Teeny Weenie: While being interrogated by Harry and Gib, Simon confesses that he has to lie to women to get laid because he has a small penis.
  • Teetering on the Edge: A van manned by terrorists slams the brakes after a fighter jet blows up the bridge ahead of them, just in time to not fall below. Then a bird lands on the hood, which is enough to send it falling into the debris below and explode.
  • Testes Test: When Gib is shot at, he hides behind a lamp post to avoid many near misses. As soon as the gunfire stops he pats himself down and he checks out his groin last. He's in one piece.
    Gib: Oh, Thank God!
    [kisses his hand and transfers the kiss to the lamp post]
  • This Is Not a Drill: Late in the film, when a nuclear bomb is about to go off in the Florida keys, Harry is heard barking orders over a radio to get Miami emergency services and so forth into place. "This is not a drill, you understand that?"
  • Threat Backfire: When Harry decides to use Omega Sector's resources to bust Helen's affair with Simon, Gib threatens to go to the head of the agency over how he wants to use top-secret government funds to solve a domestic matter, Harry threatens to expose him as well. When Gib says that he has nothing to hide, Harry snaps back: "What about that time you blew a six-week operation because you were too busy getting a blow job?" Gib immediately starts following Harry's lead.
  • Throwaway Guns: After the horseback chase, Harry ends up tossing away his sidearm off the top of the building to keep himself from plummeting off its side.
  • Token Enemy Minority: Downplayed to the point of aversion. Faisil is clearly an ethnic Arab, as are the Crimson Jihad villains. However, the only way we know this is his name, and it has absolutely no bearing on the plot or his characterization. He speaks American-accented English, his religion and heritage are never brought up, and in every respect he behaves like any other member of Harry's organization. Notably, he's the one who pulls off The Infiltration into the enemy building at the end of the movie, but he doesn't do it by posing as one of the terrorists - he's simply slipped in as part of the news crew whose presence Salim has demanded so he can give his demands to the world.
  • Total Party Kill: Harry finishes off the rest of Crimson Jihad with a Harrier missile that Aziz is hanging from.
  • To the Pain: We're given a brief pan across gleaming stainless steel surgical instruments and vials of drugs but this serves as a Chekhov's Gun, notably the Patterson trocar Harry uses to kill the guard while using the torturer as a Human Shield.
  • Trailers Always Lie: The original trailer showed Jamie Lee Curtis in an interrogation chamber being grilled about her husband. Not shown: Her interrogator is her husband, and he's more interested in whether she's cheating on him.
  • Tranquil Fury: Harry is in a permanent state of this when he discovers that Helen is (supposedly) having an affair. When he spies the guy, Simon, through a pair of binoculars, he holds the binocs so hard he shatters one of the lenses.
  • Tranquilizer Dart: Implied. Harry and Helen are shot with unseen projectiles through a close-range weapon and lose consciousness.
  • Truth in Television: Harry emerges from a lake in a wetsuit. Removing the suit, he reveals a tuxedo. While astounding, this actually happened in World War II. Peter Talezaar conducted a raid in occupied Holland using just this disguise.
  • Truth Serum:
    • Leading to the page quote:.
      Harry: Ask me something I would normally lie about.
      Helen: ...Are we gonna die?
      Harry: Yep!
    • Also this case of Pre-emptive Declaration:
      Harry: First I'm gonna use you as a human shield, then I'm gonna kill this guard over there, with the Patterson trocar on the table. Then I was thinking about breaking your neck.
      Samir: And how are you going to do all that?
      Harry: You know my handcuffs?
      Samir: Hmm?
      Harry: I picked them.
      [Samir gives shocked expression look and gasps in horror. Harry proceeds to do exactly what he had just said he would].
  • Try and Follow: Aziz jumps from one building to another in a motorcycle. Harry is completely willing to follow, his horse however refuses to do the same.
  • Two-Faced Aside: When the Marine jet pilots worry that their missiles might detonate the nukes, Harry assures them it will be fine. Then he turns to Gib and gives an "I hope" grimace. (It's not known if the filmmakers knew this but Harry was almost certainly right: the fusion warheads said to be in use are not easy to set off, so the most even a direct hit would likely do would be to contaminate the vicinity.)
  • Two Scenes, One Dialogue: When Gib is driving Harry to Juno's office:
    Gib: All right, reality check. Let's go.
    Harry: Hi, my name is Harry Renquist. I own a corporate art consultant company [scene changes to Harry handing his business card to Juno's receptionist continuing the dialogue] in San Francisco and I have an appointment with Miss Skinner.
  • Two Words: I Can't Count: An exasperated Gib breaks the word "insane" into two words:
    Gib: Okay, I've got two words for that: In. Sane.
  • Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Tasker (on a horse) chases a terrorist (on a dirtbike) into the lobby of a hotel. The terrorist rides right into a glass-walled elevator and takes a hostage. Tasker rides into the next elevator, with a well-to-do couple who wind up pressed against the glass with the horse's rear in their face. And the whole ride up, Tasker and the bad guy are glaring daggers at each other.
  • Unconventional Vehicle Chase: Harry, on a horse, trying to chase down the film's villain, on a motorcycle, through the streets of Washington, D.C., a mall, and a hotel.
  • Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Subverted in Harry's escape from the Torture Technician. Harry says exactly what he is going to do.
  • Vehicle Vanish: A bus parks between the rear view mirror of Gib's car and Aziz, who is loitering and visible behind him. By the time the bus leaves Aziz is gone.
  • Vehicular Assault: There's a heroic variant when the hero goes after terrorists in an office building with a Harrier Jet. It ends badly for the terrorists.
  • Victoria's Secret Compartment: Twice. Juno Skinner keeps her business card in her bra. Likewise, Helen hides the transmitter bug between her breasts, but quickly loses it when her dancing carelessly puts her head upside down off the edge of the bed.
  • Villainous Crush: After Harry does the tango with Juno at the start of the film, she gives him her card and stares longingly at him as he departs.
    Gib: Son of a bitch knows her for two minutes and she's ready to bear his children.
  • Wannabe Secret Agent: Played with.
    • Simon pretends to be a spy, but it's as much an act to impress women as it is his own fantasy. However, as befitting most non-protagonist examples of this trope, he gets his comeuppance when he blunders into the real thing.
    • Inverted with Helen, who is at first a reluctant participant in the spy game, but ultimately discovers she has a thirst for adventure. Unlike Simon, she evolves into the real thing by the end of the film.
  • Wedding Ring Removal:
    • Inverted just after the Action Prologue. Upon returning home after the mission to Switzerland, Gib has to remind Harry to put his wedding ring back on after he'd removed it for his cover ID.
    • Later, when Helen is playing a High-Class Call Girl and modifying her outfit into a Little Black Dress with Boyish Short Hair, she struggles to remove her wedding band so she can put it on a different finger as generic jewelry. This comes back after they escape from the Crimson Jihad.
      Harry: This is the wrong finger.
      [Harry replaces the ring and they have The Big Damn Kiss]
  • We Have Ways of Making You Talk: Samir is prepared to torture Harry for information. Harry does talk... about how he will escape.
  • Who Writes This Crap?!: When having a guy record romantic dialog for an apparent sting operation, the agent doing the voice asked who wrote it, and that it's la merde.
  • Willing Suspension of Disbelief:
    • Harry Tasker, a physically imposing guy, is supposed to be a mild-mannered computer salesman that is totally, definitely not involved in any espionage activity.
    • Harry is able to conceal his identity as a spy from both his wife of fifteen years and his fourteen-year-old daughter. His spy missions are believed to be business trips by his family.
    • Helen does not recognize Harry’s silhouette or build at all when she dances for him.
  • Within Arm's Reach: While thinking her undercover operation is for real, Helen does such a good job of dancing for/seducing hidden-in-the-shadows Harry, that he asks her to lie down on the bed and close her eyes so he can bend over her and kiss her without her discovering his identity. Still thinking he's one of the bad guys and surmising that he wants her to make love with him, she - with eyes still closed - flails one arm around, grabs the bedside phone and beans him over the head with it to escape his advances.
  • With This Ring: Helen's wedding set does some moving around.
    • First she moves it to the wrong hand because she's playing prostitute in the little scenario Harry set up for her.
    • Then she leaves it there on finding out Harry's been lying to her about being a spy.
    • When Harry makes up with his wife (saving her life will do that), he remarks the ring is on the wrong hand and puts it back on her left hand.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Aziz slaps Juno Skinner hard, twice, for her perceived errors.
  • You Can Leave Your Hat On: Helen thinks she is a spy pretending to be a prostitute. Her "client" is really her husband and he asks her to perform a striptease for him.
  • You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
    • When Harry is chasing a motorcycle-riding Aziz on horseback, Aziz jumps down from one building to the pool of the nearby hotel. Harry tries to follow, but his horse skids to a stop just before trying to leap the impossible distance.
    • Aziz gives this look when he sees that Harry showed up to rescue Dana in the Harrier.
  • Zany Scheme: Harry hatches quite a crazy plan to monitor and get the truth out of his wife about her potential affair.

 
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True Lies-Carlos the Terrorist

Simon goes all in to convince the Feds not to kill him.

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