True Lies - 4K Digital Review

[Michael Scott]

True Lies

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras: :
Final Score:


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Movie
I can’t believe it! It’s been 20 years since we’ve had a really decent version of True Lies on home video. The old DVD was painful to watch due to being Non-Anamorphic, and next to no one has a working D-VHS player to watch the old 1080i tape on anymore. I’ve had to make due with rip of the D-VHS tape made almost 10 years ago and put on my server and streamed, but pretty much every single Blu-ray fan has been BEGGING 20th Century Fox and James Cameron to re-release this film and The Abyss on Blu-ray or 4K UHD. It’s finally here and Disney/Fox have releases this, The Abyss, Aliens and the collector’s edition of both Avatar and Avatar 2 on streaming in preparation for the March release of these films on 4K UHD.

True Lies is probably one of the greatest 1990s action movies of all time, rivaling the all time greatest, which is of course Face/Off. This was a time when action stars were burly hulking men, the women were smoking hot, they all said horrible one liners, and things blew up EVERYWHERE. Arnold was still king of the action world at this time, and pretty much at his peak popularity when James Cameron created the cinematic masterpiece known as True Lies.

The story itself is pretty simple and rote, with your typical 90s trappings. Arnie is Harry Tasker, a mild mannered computer salesman with a big secret. He’s been married for almost 17 years to his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and has a 14 year old daughter named Dana (Eliza Dushku). They live the suburban dream, but things aren’t exactly what they seem. Harry is actually a government spook, pulling off covert Mission Impossible style operations all over the globe, while coming home to wife and daughter under the guise of his computer salesman job. Things go haywire when a terrorist group known as Crimson Jihad start operating in the area and get their hands on some nuclear weapons. Harry and his partner Gib (Tom Arnold) are tasked with figuring things out, but they’re only able to get so much information before the terrorists figure out that Harry isn’t who he says he is.

To make matters worse, Harry thinks his wife is having an affair, only to find out that she’s on the verge of one because she feels neglected at home. Hoping to reignite a spark in their love life, Harry uses his agency connections to rig up a fake “op” for Helen to go on WHO or WHAT is pulling her strings. Unfortunately their little game comes to an end when Crimson Jihad catches the both of them, forcing Harry to reveal to his wife that he’s not the boring man she thinks he is, but rather a super spy.

Yeah, I don’t care what people say, True Lies is a stone cold action masterpiece. It has everything that we loved about the 90s and more. Cameron used an insane budget with some amazing special effects to pump up a fairly straightforward spy movie into a mega blockbuster with Arnold, Jamie Lee and everyone involved blowing things up left and right. It’s goofy, it’s silly, but it’s a whole lot of fun where we all just have to ignore the implausibility of it all (and mentally block out the fact that we can see every stunt double in the film plain as day, even worse than Face/Off) while stuffing popcorn down our face. This is THE quintessential action movie when someone asks me for a 90s action film, and I’m absolutely giddy that we finally get a home video release after all these years.




Rating:

Rated R for a lot of action/violence and some language




Video:

Ugggggggg, I can’t believe I’m writing this. I feel sick to my stomach and slightly heartbroken. Over 20 years since the last semi decent release (the 2003 D-VHS tape) of True Lies. Years spent begging for this film to get released in something other than an obsolete format or the terrible Non-Anamorphic DVD, and we get a Terminator 2 transfer. It was revealed shortly before the 12th when these 5 Cameron films dropped on digital that he had employed some brand new AI algorithmic techniques to degrain and polish up the film during the remaster, and that made some of us a LITTLE worried considering Cameron’s past work with Terminator 2. Well, those fears turned out to be justified as this is easily one of the most egregious case of digital tinkering I’ve ever seen on the 4K format, including Terminator 2 and the old Blu-ray release of Face/Off.

According to Bill Hunt Fox/Disney struck new masters for these films, but I’m not sure if that’s completely true as this looks remarkably like an older scan of the film with some of the same problems the DVHS tape had back 2003. But this time it’s just simply SLATHERED in AI tinkering that makes things look like a wax museum. You see, this is a bit different than the old fashioned DNR and smoothing techniques of 15 years ago, this time AI is used ala Titanic and The Lord of the Rings 4K to predict and smooth out grain, while also digitally creating new details at the same time. The idea is brilliant, and one day may be THE way to salvage old and dying films, but in this instance it’s over used and turned up to level 11.

The biggest problem from the transfer is that everything is basically a wax museum. Facial details are wiped out with what looks like putty for facial tones and textures. Check out the scene in the van near the beginning where Tom Arnold is giving instructions to Arnold. Or where Arnie slams Tom up against the car when he finds out his wife is most likely having an affair. Look at their faces and look at the facial hair on their face. They look like a live action version of Clay Face from the 1990s Batman The Animated Series. Even the facial hair stubble looks smeared and clay like, as if the AI struggled to replicate the stubble and just Photoshopped it in. Not to mention an incredibly thick and heavy teal color grading to the entire thing that doesn’t really help at all. The teal combined with the putty like faces makes them look even more gray and like LITERAL gray putty/clay. What’s even more eerie is watching the eyes on peoples faces. Due to the sharp contrast against the softer faces, the AI boosts the whites of the eyes and appears to make them razor sharp in contrast with the putty like tones of the faces, making it look like something straight out of a horror movie. Grain is nearly completely gone, but it’s not really “scrubbed” like we’re used to. You can actually see the grain if you look really closely, but it’s underneath an entire mountain of AI artifacting that is meant to cover it up, so it looks extremely odd.

Now, not everything is doom and gloom. The image looks way better than the old DVD in many ways, with some things like the red of a pipe, or the gleam of the yellow scaffolding that Dana and Aziz are teetering on near the end really shine. There’s a goodly amount of detail, but that detail gets hampered quite heavily by the tinkering. There are shots that look extremely well done, but those are almost instantly replaced by a horribly waxy looking shot, forcing you to watch good scene, bad scene over and over again throughout the movie. I have a hard time actually deciding which one is worse. Terminator 2 or this one, as they each do things better than the other. I can sort of forgive T2 due to how soft it looks and the over sharpening makes it look a bit garrish but not HORRIBLE, while this one screams “I could have been amazing, but James Cameron was addicted to working with AI technology instead of properly remastering me”. At this point I firmly believe Cameron needs to stay the heck away from his films when they’re remastered.








Audio:

The Dolby Atmos track is very solid as well. Like most Disney overseen mixes, it definitely needs a few boosts on the volume knob to get to reference level, but once that’s done it’s a fairly dynamic mix with a lot going for it. The dialog is crystal clear as usual, with great use of the surrounds and overheads throughout, with an emphasis on those overheads during the last 25 minutes of the film with the harrier jets. Overall this is a really nice mix, but I noticed that the bass wasn’t AS massive as I remembered from the Laserdisc and D-VHS tape, but that simply could have been due to the compression that happens on streaming audio mixes. I’m honestly curious to hear what the 4K UHD sounds like in a few months.







Extras:

• Theatrical Trailer
• Fear Is Not an Option: A Look Inside True Lies

Final Score: ​

True Lies is worth every second of the kinetic action ride. It’s full of great characters, a fun cast, and it just WORKED back in the 1990s. The only downside to this whole thing is a transfer that is better than we’ve had it for many years, but so incredibly butchered with James Cameron’s obsession with AI restoration technology. It honestly feels like he used this film (and a couple of the others from this batch sadly) as a testing hotbed for the tech more than actually be careful to replicate the source material. It is what is, and while I know that this is still a streaming copy vs. the full bitrate of a 4K UHD physical disc, but this is the let down of the decade. Which is compounded by the fact that fans have been waiting SOOOOOO long for this film to come out.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Eliza Dushku, Bill Paxton, Art Malik, Tia Carrere
Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron, Claude Zidi, Simon Michael
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos
Subtitles: English
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Rated: R
Runtime: 140 Minutes
Digital Release Date: November 12th, 2023

Recommendation: AMAZING Movie

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. A great movie to own.

 

[Todd Anderson]

I'll have to go back and look at the scenes (video-wise) that you're noting... I did think that close-up shots look great with lots of detail.

Unfortunately, Mike... bass in the movie is very *meh*. A lot of it has to do with how the film's sound was crafted. But, it's really hit or miss with some glaring issues. :-(

 

[Michael Scott]

I'll have to go back and look at the scenes (video-wise) that you're noting... I did think that close-up shots look great with lots of detail.

Unfortunately, Mike... bass in the movie is very *meh*. A lot of it has to do with how the film's sound was crafted. But, it's really hit or miss with some glaring issues. :-(

look at those shots and freeze frame them. it's very easy to see that much of the "detail" is artifiically created and starts clashing with other natural details in the same frame. It's shocking when you look at it closely (the scene where Arnie has Tom rammed up against the car when he finds about about the affair is really obvious. you can actually see that some of the stubble is duplicated and artifiically inserted ...especially when you pull up the D-VHS and compare it in an A/B scene). The putty look was what really drove me nuts.

yeah, the bass was not nearly so consistent as I was hoping for. him detonating that explosion at the beginning and the end one were great, but it could vanish at a moment's notice.was weird.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Sure wish they'd source direct from the negative and leave it as is!

 

[Michael Scott]

Sure wish they'd source direct from the negative and leave it as is!

100%..this breaks my heart as it literally is one of my favorite action movies of all time and to wait THIS long with THIS much anticipation by fans is just a huge let down.

 

[Michael Scott]

Aliens at least looks better and The Abyss is probably the best looking of the mix (it's still tinkered with, but it's the least egrigious by a large margin)

I feel like we're back in 2007 where studio heads and film makers are enamored with DNR and got over excited to apply it to every Blu-ray (Commando for example) and make everything look new and "glossy", except now it's with fancy AI algorithms... it's going to take time for them to realize how to use it judiciously rather than think "this thing can do everything FOR us so we don't have to spend as much!"

 

[Todd Anderson]

I'm in the same boat as you - this movie is one of my favorites as well. Definitely disappointing not to be blown away by the final product

 

[Todd Anderson]

Aliens at least looks better and The Abyss is probably the best looking of the mix (it's still tinkered with, but it's the least egrigious by a large margin)

I feel like we're back in 2007 where studio heads and film makers are enamored with DNR and got over excited to apply it to every Blu-ray (Commando for example) and make everything look new and "glossy", except now it's with fancy AI algorithms... it's going to take time for them to realize how to use it judiciously rather than think "this thing can do everything FOR us so we don't have to spend as much!"

I'm sure they have their reasons... or, perhaps, they actually are putting a lot less effort into catalog titles than we think?

 

[Michael Scott]

I'm sure they have their reasons... or, perhaps, they actually are putting a lot less effort into catalog titles than we think?

Personally, I think it's Cameron himself for this one. He did the same thing to Avatar for the 4K just not as bad. He did it for all 3 of these catalog titles too. Remember what happened with Terminator 2??? People at the time brushed it off as "they had to use the DNR'd and scrubbed 3D master because the original source was in bad shape" as a cope, but the more and more we look at the pattern, this is most likely intentional by James Cameron. The heavy Teal grading, the waxy looks, the obsession with grain scrubbing. He loves that glossy digital Avatar look and seems to want to recreate his classics in that manner with these "upgrades"

at this point I think the only James Cameron film that is going to look natural in 4K is probably Piranha 2, and that's only because he doesn't care enough about the film to be bothered with it. lol

 

[Todd Anderson]

Well, in that case, I can't WAIT for Piranha 2!

One that that stuck out for me in True Lies, is the number of times Arnold's stunt double was obvious and easy to pick out... to the point that you can see their facial features and (what appears to be) wigs. I don't remember noticing that on my DVD copy (which I used to watch on a 27" Sony Trinitron)

 

[Michael Scott]

Well, in that case, I can't WAIT for Piranha 2!

One that that stuck out for me in True Lies, is the number of times Arnold's stunt double was obvious and easy to pick out... to the point that you can see their facial features and (what appears to be) wigs. I don't remember noticing that on my DVD copy (which I used to watch on a 27" Sony Trinitron)

LOL!!! I mentioned that in the review, but this is fully on Face/Off level of stunt double obviousness. on an 85 inch screen from 8.5 feet away it's SUPER obvious. Heck I remember it being obvously on my 42 inch plasma a decade ago when I watched the D-VHS.... IMO it adds to some of the cheesy charm.

 

[Todd Anderson]

LOL...

Also makes you appreciate Tom Cruise a lot more! :-)

 

[Todd Anderson]

Here are some images of True Lies 4K taken from Kscape… so this is what the disc will deliver. At times, the film looks great, at other times it’s flat and somewhat smeared. Anyhow, you can judge for yourself from these iPhone screen shots ;-)

 

[Michael Scott]

one thing that's very weird is how the eyes in all these AI tweaked films look. they look almost EERIE with how sharp and piercing they are. comes from them being such high contrast that the AI can do the best with them, while smearing other parts... kind of fascinating.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Yeah. Also, parts of the image that are out of focus gets super fuzzy. No bueno