or: True Lies is a feel good movie

It has been at least seven years and a few relocations since I last watched True Lies.

I bought the DVD while living in Australia, took it to HK where it had many viewings before I gave away my television and sorted through my remaining DVDs to keep only my favourites that, at that time, I couldn’t download online.

It meant all my other DVDs could be donated and only True Lies remained.

It has been a favourite for a very long time which was why I wanted to keep it in the first place.

Over the years, I’ve tried to see if I can find it online to watch through the Play Store or iTunes or Netflix yet it has never been there when I’ve searched so I’ve continued to keep the hard copy.

I haven’t been able to watch it though as any gadget I’ve had over this period hasn’t had a DVD player and it seemed a bit silly to buy one for the sake of one movie.

This DVD moved with me to Japan, returned to HK and still remained unwatched.

It was packed away and joined me in Mauritius in March last year.

It was unwatched until last night.

As our lockdown continues, we took the TV from the dive centre (on our shopping day so we were allowed out) and the DVD player.

Last night we sat down with a few adult beverages and some gadiak to watch.

It’s one of those movies that no matter how bad my day has been, it will always make me smile. There is something about this feel good tale (everyone lives happily every after except for the bad guys – no, I don’t think this is a spoiler!), the ridiculousness of parts of it and the general humour in it that makes me chuckle. Perhaps the wine helps.

The lockdown is wearing a little thin on me at the moment and I’m frustrated with some of the rules that make little to no sense and / or seem fairly arbitrary, and it’s been tough staying motivated for our business (since we still can’t work and have no idea when this will change yet still maintaining our social media and really should work on our website too) and creating the new one, so watching this movie was a great idea.

I was worried that it wasn’t going to work on this player given the location restrictions of DVDs. Made no difference.

After all of this time, and after so many viewings, I still notice things I haven’t paid attention to before. Like Arnie’s kicking style in the scuba diving scene. Best described as unique.

Whistling Edelweiss before killing some bad guys.

Some continuity bits and pieces, like changes in hairstyles from one scene to the next (not Arnie’s).

This movie remains one of my favourites though I’m not sure when I’ll be watching it again!

Thanks to Brad Fiedler for this tune. He’s also the guy who did the music for The Terminator and quite a few others too.

Interesting fact – True Lies is the first film that had a production budget over USD100million.