Thirty-two years later, James Cameron’s True Lies still plays like one of the best action movies ever made, and Bill Paxton’s turn as the shady car salesman Simon remains a key reason why. The film may be remembered for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s swagger and the stuntwork around him, but its emotional sting comes from how Cameron turns a family crisis into a spy-movie panic.
That crisis hits when Harry Tasker, the international secret agent who passes himself off as a low-level computer hardware salesman, realizes his wife Helen, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is drawn toward Simon. Helen’s willingness to have an affair with the shady salesman is described as a genuinely heartbreaking moment for Harry, because it exposes how far he has drifted from his own family. Eliza Dushku plays their daughter Dana, and the whole setup gives the movie its strange balance of espionage and domestic comedy.
True Lies is a rarity because it is genuinely suspenseful. Cameron does not just move pieces around for spectacle; he uses the threat of Harry’s double life to make the family scenes feel dangerous in their own way. That is why Paxton’s role matters so much. Simon is not the hero’s equal, but he is the outsider who makes Harry’s neglect impossible to ignore.
The movie also stands as a feat of technical wizardry that has aged well. Cameron had already worked with Schwarzenegger on The Terminator and its sequel, and True Lies pushed that collaboration into bigger, broader territory. In the '90s, it was discussed as a spy film that arrived before the decade’s big resurgence of the genre. A year later, James Bond returned in Goldeneye, and a year after that Tom Cruise starred in Mission: Impossible. Cameron’s film came first, and the mix of action, espionage and family comedy still sets it apart.
What lasts now is not just the scale but the feeling that every part of the movie is pulling in the same direction. Harry is trying to save the world and his marriage at the same time, and Simon makes the private loss feel as real as the public danger. That is the mark of a film that still works: the explosions age, but the heartbreak does not.
