Straight to the point, today we are going to talk about a sex comedy that "Ka Shen" has made.
"Kashin" is naturally James Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar.
Perhaps it is precisely because these works are so dazzling that many people do not realize that he has also made comedies, and it is a sexual comedy.
However, seeing this picture, I believe that many old drivers will smile:
This movie is the second Hollywood blockbuster starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and introduced by Chinese mainland, "True Lies".
Some time ago, we just talked about "Outlaw", which was the first Hollywood blockbuster introduced by China.
If "Outlaw" brings a blockbuster texture to Chinese audiences, then "True Lies", introduced the following year, is a shocking experience of super blockbusters.
In my mind, it's one of the best action comedies in Hollywood, and even now, the big scenes and laughs in it are not outdated.
Because it reaches a level of extreme in both action and comedy, yet maintains a perfect balance.
And what I call "sexual comedy" is not just a joke.
The film was rated R-rated, introduced to the mainland that year, and was not cut, and was released in full.
Many of the lucky ones who saw it in the theater that year still remember it:
The plot of the film can be simply boiled down to - "Married James Bond, found himself green, and played the game of spying to catch the villain's horn (desire) color (hope) play (pick) (teasing) game with his wife, but was unexpectedly intruded by the real villain, disturbing the story of the couple's sexuality."
Harry, the male protagonist played by Arnold, is a spy who hides his identity from his wife and daughter.
Due to his busy tasks, he always came home late at night. Daily stylized communication and lack of married life brought him to the "seventeen-year itch" of marriage.
This had already aroused the dissatisfaction of his wife, Helen, but Harry, who was preoccupied with his work, was unaware.
Even Helen's various suggestive jokes were indifferent.
It wasn't until he once heard Helen and his colleagues' "tiger and wolf words" that he realized with hindsight that his wife had cheated on him.
Unwilling, he decided to use his spy skills to fight Xiao San.
After investigation, he quickly found out that this little third was a second-rate man who sold second-hand cars, specializing in pretending to be spies and seducing good family women.
He used this to create a sense of mystery, attract Helen's admiration, and let Helen pretend to be his wife and go with him to Paris to arrest terrorists.
In order to make the two look like a real couple, trick her into needing to "rehearse" in advance...
At this critical moment, Harry and his companions disguised as "terrorists" arrived at the scene, overturned the roof of the little three houses, and arrested the two.
Xiao San was directly frightened to pee his pants, and said everything that should not be said.
As for his wife, Harry decided to make up his mind and carry out the spy game to the end.
He takes his wife to the interrogation room, where he and his good friend hide behind the scenes using a voice changer to interrogate her.
As a result, Harry learned that his wife was not cheating, and the reason why he was attracted to "Little Three" was to experience the pleasure of being a spy and create passion for life.
Harry was overjoyed to hear this, and told a true lie on the spot--he said that he was a legitimate American spy, and asked Helen to help him do things for his crime.
In order to facilitate the movement, Helen was also given a code name called Doris.
Helen's first task was to seduce Harry's disguised arms dealer.
Thus, there is the "temptation of the wife" of the large-scale dance that people talk about.
However, Harry's self-directed "Spy and Passion" has not yet succeeded, and he repeats the mistakes of "Little Three" - the couple has been captured by the real arms dealers he tracked down before.
And these people are all real terrorists, trying to detonate nuclear bombs and declare war on the United States.
However, as a comedy, the film naturally ends with a happy ending.
Harry hunted them all down, saving his wife and his daughter.
Of all the reviews of True Lies, I think there's one sentence that's the most accurate—
There is no doubt that this film, which uses espionage as a gimmick, is a parody and subversion of the 007 series.
As I said at the beginning, this film is like a spy comedy with a family child after Bond gets married.
There are very obvious homages to the 007 film in the film, such as Harry's self-report to "Ha Girl", using Bond's unique introduction:
"Bond, James Bond"
For example, the scene where Harry escapes from a gunfight in the snowy mountain jungle is a classic passage that imitates the tried and tested classic passage of the 007 movie:
Not only that, But Arnold also used this movie to pay tribute to his friend, another action superstar of his generation, Stallone.
One of the terrorists appears wearing Rambo's signature green uniform from First Blood.
Arguably, Arnold played stallone in the movie in this way, a full 20 years before their later collaboration in Daredevil 3.
Interestingly, Cameron himself is the screenwriter of First Blood 2. So this is also a self-tribute to Kashin, who even asked Helen to say the line "I married Rambo":
In addition to these homages, "True Lies" also has many groundbreaking famous scenes, which have been imitated by future generations.
For example, the scene of Arnold galloping in the downtown area and carrying out a horse and car chase battle is unique.
He rode a high-headed horse from the downtown area all the way into the luxury building, and also showed off a horse riding an elevator.
The whole action design is full of imagination and humor, which is addictive.
Later, in the action film "Fast and Ready", Keanu Reeves paid a big tribute.
And Arnold's toilet battle with "Stallone" was also staged again by Brother Tang and "Dachao" in "Mission Impossible 6".
Hilarious passages such as machine guns falling down steps and automatic shooting and killing people are abused by countless action movies.
Of course, the most impressive famous scene is the pun line "you are fired" when Arnold ends the villain!
Another translation is called "Send you a missile."
The action design here is so subtle and the operation difficulty is extremely anti-heavenly, so that later films can't learn it if they want to learn it.
Kill two birds with one stone, solve the big villain and the little minions at once
It can also be seen that the most powerful thing about this film is to integrate the action and comedy elements into the plot and picture.
On top of this, there are many humorous plot designs that make people can't help but be funny.
For example, Helen accidentally fell while dancing, which frightened Harry, but Helen immediately resurrected in place in order to complete the "mission", making Harry can't help but cover his eyes;
For example, before Helen saw the "arms dealer", she felt that she was not sexy enough, tearing off her skirt in the corridor, wiping her head with vase water, and incidentally adding makeup to the concave shape of the bridge, which was also inexplicably funny.
Speaking of which, it must be mentioned that Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Helen, is known as the "Scream Queen" and is a big star who has acted in horror movies and comedies.
Her performance completely elevated the film to a higher level, and various body language and small expressions showed Helen's sexiness and cuteness to the fullest, and even the hunky Arnold became romantic and humorous.
However, the reason why "True Lies" is so classic is far more than just the brilliance of action and comedy.
The film uses the form of a spy play, fake drama and other dramas, metaphorically referring to the marriage crisis of middle-aged couples, in fact, it captures the pain points of the times in the United States.
On the one hand, at the beginning of the 90s, just after the end of the Cold War, the US economy developed rapidly, but the divorce rate soared, reaching an exaggerated 50%.
This makes men with successful careers, like Harry in the film, have a general "being green" anxiety.
When Harry thought his wife had cheated on him, the good friend's words of god were a portrayal of this phenomenon.
In the plot of the wisdom fight Xiao San, the film also proposes a "derailment theology" through the mouth of Xiao San:
Although this view does not represent the whole truth, it is very similar to the situation in the United States at that time.
Because of this, Harry was so angry when he first investigated The Third Child, but he did not get mad on the spot.
On the other hand, at that time, computer technology was in full swing, and influence penetrated into all aspects of society.
In the film, Harry's cover identity is that of a computer salesman.
Whether it's the computer systems he uses to track terrorists or the high-tech props, they all give the illusion that the United States is invincible.
But in fact, the United States also faced a major distress at that time, that is, the terrorist threat from the Arab world.
The villain in the film is a typical Islamic terrorist, who wants to detonate the nuclear bomb and destroy the big city of the United States, and even predicts the meaning of 9/11.
From this perspective, True Lies is also a rather forward-looking political thriller. Combined with the current international environment, and then revisiting this main Theme of the United States, there is a sense of playfulness that time has changed and attacked and defended.
Of course, these political metaphors aside, True Lies is also a super blockbuster that can be played. Fortunately, today, we can completely treat it as a comedy