Action movies get remade all the time – even classics that should be left well alone – but deciding to breathe new life into one of the greatest ever made that hailed from the genre dream team of James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger was always doomed to fail, so at least True Lies is living up to expectations on that front.
Barely a solitary soul was excited when it was first announced the 1994 blockbuster was being given the small screen treatment, because the movie’s entire success and appeal was built around Cameron’s dynamic filmmaking that blended cutting-edge CGI with explosive practical effects, one of the leading man’s best-ever performances in a sly subversion of his onscreen persona, not to mention Jamie Lee Curtis on phenomenal Golden Globe-winning from as the final prong on the central trident.
The fact the episodic do-over only holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of 41 percent underlines the futility of the entire exercise, because there’s surely no way anybody involved thought for a second they’d be able to do True Lies anywhere close to as good – never mind better – than Cameron, Schwarzenegger, and Curtis.
And yet, it’s been doing okay in the ratings, and has also emerged as a surprise success story on Disney Plus. Per FlixPatrol, since being made available to stream in a handful of international markets, the CBS original has been running and gunning its way up the ranks on the Mouse House’s in-house platform, even if it’s too early to hold your breath for a guaranteed second season renewal. In the meantime, just watch True Lies V1.0 instead, which is also in the library as a 20th Century Fox production.