A Film Canon

By the 90s, most action films had taken on a parodic edge, so it's a testament to True Lies that it never devolves into full parody. In fact, James Cameron seems less interested in parody than in fantasy, heightening the genre to a pitch that's simultaneously ridiculous and sublime - a vision of America in technological hyperbole. Surprisingly, this fantasy isn't attributed to the stereotypical action demographic - young white males - but to bored housewives, transforming the genre into an iteration of suburban melodrama, which it supplements in much the same way that science fiction did in the 50s. As a counter-terrorist agent, Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has to protect his identity from wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis). But when Helen starts seeking satisfaction with a used car salesman (Bill Paxton), who not only titillates her by pretending to be a counter-terrorist agent, but actually takes credit for Harry's deeds, Harry has to take action. The more exaggerated this action becomes, the more it domesticates and even effeminises Harry - and the audience - and it's in this paradox that the film's comic genius lies, as well as its affectionate, protective affinity for its generic forbears. On the one hand, it's an elegy for a genre reaching the end of its classical period, as evinced in the kitsch pastness of the opening and closing scenes. On the other hand, this collapse of fantasy and reality gestures towards the post-classical action film ushered in by Michael Bay, in which the site of action is neither American nor foreign soil, but some new, post-cinematic, deterretorialised space, here imagined as the Florida Keys, in one of the film's most enduring and iconic set-pieces.