Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. This fourth installment in the end-of-the-world franchise is not really science fiction at all. Nope, this is director McG's big, loud, gritty, steely-gray war epic. Gone is the philosophy and metaphors about time travel, the dangers of letting machines and computers take over our lives, the loss of innocence, motherhood. With this new film, the other thing that has officially vanished from the Terminator universe is heart--ironic since the human heart is a major plot point in TERMINATOR SALVATION. What we're left with is a collection of hardened bad-asses battling some of the meanest fucking robots I've ever seen. In any other movie, this might bother me less bother. But one of the things I always loved about Cameron's first two films, and even the subpar third movie and the "Sarah Connor Chronicles" TV show (which I contend got progressively better as it went on), is that not everybody in each story was supposed to be a grizzled soldier. Sarah Connor was an unremarkable woman when we met her all those years ago; she became remarkable to protect her son, who in turn grew into a little shit who had to learn to fight from a friendly Terminator sent back to protect him. Since TERMINATOR SALVATION opens several years after Judgment Day (when the machines preemptively strike against humans with nuclear attacks around the world), there are no "ordinary" people left in the world, so perhaps my search for normal folk is foolish. And that's a valid counter my feelings about what's missing from this new film. Then just don't call it this movie TERMINATOR; call it POST-APOCALYPTIC WAR, PART 79. This "everyman" quality always separated the TERMINATOR films from all of the other end-of-the-world movies. Instead, we get a war picture complete with big elaborate battle sequences, concentration camps, submarines, helicopters, bullets zipping by, flares lighting up the night sky, you name it. There's even a GREAT ESCAPE-style great escape. When we meet Christian Bale's John Connor, he's already in CAPS LOCK!!! mode. Every line is belted out like an order or an injured animal (by the way, I thought the cinematography looked really nice here). Gone is the sassy, good-natured teen and young man; make way for super-soldier John. We also meet Marcus Wright (Australian newcomer Sam Worthington), a one-time death row prisoner who was executed until someone wakes him up a couple decades later having no idea the turn for the worse the world has made. He's determined to make his way to San Francisco, where he wants to find someone who he lost touch with. He stumbles upon Kyle Reese (the man who will be sent back in time by John Connor to have sex with his mother to father him; got it?), played as a young man by Anton Yelchin (the new STAR TREK’s Chekov). Kyle decides to follow this mysterious stranger because the alternative is to not follow him. That's about the level of logic that permeates this movie, sorry folks. The biggest problem for me is that the film's big "mystery" is hardly a mystery--it's revealed in the trailer that the human rebellion has an infiltrator in their midst, and it doesn't take a PhD to figure out who it is even if you haven't seen the trailer. I'm not even 100 percent it qualifies as a secret at this point, but for that infinitesimal number of you who don't know, I won't spoil it here. I grew increasingly frustrated with the truly abysmal state of the screenplay for TERMINATOR SALVATION. It's disjointed, aimless, front-loaded with clichéd dialogue and scenarios, and sadly lacking in any emotion outside of rage. Again, I get that, in a way: the collective human population is suffering from global post-traumatic stress disorder and anything other than hardened, solider-like personalities might be asking too much. But that doesn't make for compelling screen acting. Speaking of which, as far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out on Sam Worthington as a force on film. I'll reserve my judgment until I see what he pulls off in James Cameron's AVATAR, but his performance here seems to consist of a combination of wide-eyed bafflement or narrow-eyed anger. Grrrrrr. And I tend to hate people that focus on whether or not an actor can hold onto an accent, but I can't wait to play the drinking game where you take a sip every time Worthington's Australian accent slips out. I'm going to be one drunk motherfucker when this movie comes out on DVD. I don't think any of the supporting cast of TERMINATOR SALVATION stands out in my mind. From Helena Bonham Carter playing the worst kind of Dr. Exposition near the end of the film to the blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearances by Jane Alexander, Common, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Michael Ironside, who probably fares better than most in making the most of his limited screen time, although the motivation for his character's impatient behavior makes no damn sense. I've only ever seen the striking Moon Bloodgood in a couple of films, most of them terrible (STREET FIGHTER; PATHFINDER), but her Blair character comes the closest to displaying the characteristics of a warm-blooded human being in these proceedings. She's compassionate and seems to understand Worthington's unique set of complications better than anyone. Maybe I am spending too much time on the negatives, and the fact is, there are some pretty cool elements to TERMINATOR SALVATION, but most of them are limited to the action scenes and special effects. I mentioned earlier that the movie is director McG's war film, and I stick by that. But it's a hell of a war film. There's a sequence near the beginning where John Connor and a small squadron are going after a robot stronghold. The mission turns into a rescue effort when they find a small number of humans at the location being held captive. Part of the sequence involves Connor exiting the hole in the ground where the stronghold is, getting into a helicopter to chase an enemy ship, getting shot down, crash landing, and getting out of the wreckage to continue fighting…all in one take (or so it seems). I've got no idea how they pulled the sequence off, but it's damned impressive. Most of the action sequences are top notch, from an attack at a gas station where we see the full range of Terminator variations (I really like the ones that look like motorcycles) to the climactic battle set at a Terminator production facility. Since so much of the film revolves around some powerful, well-staged action set pieces, if that's all you care about, you should have a pretty great time watching this movie. I was certainly a lot happier when the bullets were flying and people were getting snatched up by giant Terminator robots that looked and acted way too much like Transformers for my taste. I got a particular kick out of the older-model Terminator that looked sort of like pirate zombies. The fact that this installment of TERMINATOR was PG-13 didn't even phase me. The violence allowed in PG-13 films these days is almost equal to what Cameron was getting away with in the first two R-rated works. If you're going to hate this movie before you even see it, don't do so because of the rating. TERMINATOR SALVATION will undoubtedly be the most divisive film in the franchise. Hell, it's the most divisive film of all the summer releases so far in my brain, and will probably continue to be so for quite some time. I suspect that when I revisit this film, I'll either see it for the action-oriented masterpiece that is might be, or I'll be so frustrated with the lack of character development and solid storytelling that I'll abandon it forever. This is half a recommendation, as you can probably tell, and whether you enjoy the film will have everything to do with your expectations of what TERMINATOR films are to you. Mine were clearly different that McG's, but that doesn't mean he's made an unwatchable film by any stretch. If you're okay with a focus on the hardware, that's cool. I remember when these movies were about people and machines finding a middle ground amidst a whole lot of bloodshed. There's some of that in TERMINATOR SALVATION, but it gets sadly lost early on, as did I. -- Capone capone@aintitcoolmail.com
