[4] The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Harry Tasker, a U.S. government agent, who struggles to balance his double life as a spy with his familial duties.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Art Malik, and Tia Carrere star in supporting roles.

True Lies received mostly positive reviews from critics, and ultimately grossed $378 million worldwide at the box office, becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 1994.

To his wife Helen and his daughter Dana, Harry Tasker is a computer hardware salesman often away on business trips, but he is actually a secret agent for Omega Sector, a top-secret U.S. counterterrorism agency.

Harry, along with his teammates Albert "Gib" Gibson and Faisil, infiltrates a party in Switzerland hosted by billionaire Jamal Khaled.

At the party, Harry meets Juno Skinner, who turns out to not only be Khaled's art dealer, but someone paid by "Crimson Jihad", a terrorist faction led by Salim Abu Aziz.

Suspecting Helen is having an affair, Harry uses Omega Sector resources to learn that Simon is a used car salesman, who pretends to be a covert agent to seduce women.

After terrifying Simon into keeping away from Helen, Harry and Gib interrogate her using a voice masking device in a secret facility.

On the island, Harry learns Crimson Jihad paid Juno to help the group smuggle four MIRV nuclear warheads by hiding them in antique statues.

They escape and learn that one warhead is set to explode in 90 minutes while the others are loaded onto vehicles to be taken into the U.S. via the Overseas Highway, thus bypassing U.S. Customs.

Harry discovers that Aziz and his men are holding Dana hostage in a Miami skyscraper and are threatening to detonate their last warhead.

[20] All music is composed by Brad Fiedel, except where notedSongs appearing in the film not included on the soundtrack album: True Lies was a box-office success.

[2] Once Forrest Gump returned to the top of the box office the following week, True Lies dropped into second place, grossing $20.7 million.

[22] It also had a record opening weekend in Japan for distributor Nippon Herald with a gross of $3 million and was number one at the Japanese box office for twelve straight weeks.

[27] True Lies went on to gross $146,282,411 in the United States and Canada and $232,600,000 in the rest of world, totaling $378,882,411 worldwide,[5] making it the third-highest-grossing film of 1994, behind The Lion King and Forrest Gump.

The website's critical consensus reads, "If it doesn't reach the heights of director James Cameron's and star Arnold Schwarzenegger's previous collaborations, True Lies still packs enough action and humor into its sometimes absurd plot to entertain".

[31] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, writing, "It's stuff like that we go to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies for, and True Lies has a lot of it: laugh-out-loud moments when the violence is so cartoonish we don't take it seriously, and yet are amazed at its inventiveness and audacity."

[33] John Simon of the National Review criticized the plot line of the hero character (Schwarzenegger) using his agency's resources to stalk and frighten his wife as cruel and misogynistic.

[34] In a negative review, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote: Taken individually, the cruder and childish things about this film, its determination to use caricatured unshaven Arabs as terrorists, the pleasure it takes in continually mortifying a weasely used-car salesman (Bill Paxton) in the most personal ways, might be overlooked, but added together they leave a sour taste.

[38][39] In a 2022 retrospective review, Polish writer Jacek Szafranowicz called the film "a masterpiece of cinematic fun", noting that the collaboration between the director and its main star "deserves a golden medal".

For better or worse, it's a marker of how the Hollywood action blockbuster had advanced in 1994, as well as a commentary (intended or not) on the troubled state of American masculinity, marital relationships, and lingering racial attitudes.

"[41] On October 1, 1994, True Lies was banned from Indonesian movie theaters due to the film spawning controversy that focused on Muslim leaders insulting Islam and portraying themselves as religious extremists.

According to the Council of Muslim Scholars, it led people to hate Arab terrorists defending the interests of some Islamic nations, but justified American terrorism.

[66][67] Following the release of Titanic in late 1997, Cameron was planning to begin work on a True Lies sequel early the following year.

Cameron planned to produce True Lies 2 with Fox, but was undecided at that time on whether he would also direct it, as he wanted to wait until the script was complete.

[83] Cameron said in 2009 that there were no plans to make the film,[85][87][88] and Curtis, in 2019, reiterated her previous comments: "I don't think we could ever do another True Lies after 9/11.

"[89] Art Malik concurred, saying during the time of True Lies' filming, "there was an element of fanaticism brewing and anti-West feeling going on.

In that film, the character had starred in True Lies and is pursued by a fan and teams up with Henry Winkler and Linda Hamilton to make a sequel; Schwarzenegger and Curtis cameo as themselves.