★★★★
“Old and Busted – New Hotness”
I feel a certain camaraderie with Arnie, since I’ve largely grown up alongside this series of movies, which is probably his finest work. I was at university when the first one came out; the second saw me living the life of a bachelor in London; and the latest installment finds me a happily married man in Arizona. Just as I’ve evolved, so have his opponents: they’ve become harder, faster and more difficult to kill; my sarcasm has been honed to a lethal edge, thanks to living with two teenagers and a pair of dogs.
One good thing about the series is that they haven’t rushed into quick-buck sequels – three movies over 19 years is unlikely to leave the audience jaded. It’s been more than a decade since the last part, leaving a lot of people wondering if Schwarzenegger could still cut it, especially after a slew of underwhelming films like End of Days and Collateral Damage. Those, however, required him to act: I’m happy to report there is no such pretense here, and the results are all the better for it.
The twist this time, and why it’s covered on this site, is that his nemesis is female. The latest model – an appropriate term given Loken’s background – is a T-X, and comes fully equipped with DNA-analysing tongue, throat-box modem, and a broad selection of interesting weaponry, though regrettably, we only get to see a couple in actual operation. They are, however, pretty damn cool.
The plot is effectively a retread of the previous entry, with John Connor (Stahl) a drug-confused member of the underclass since his mother died of leukemia (possibly Hollywoodese for “Linda Hamilton wanted too much money”). He goes on the run with former schoolmate Kate (Danes), whose father just happens to be the guy in charge of SkyNet. What are the odds against that? These two are supposed to meet and fall in love, but there’s a bump on their road to happiness, in the shape of a nuclear war due to start at 6:18 pm that night.
This romantic angle has all the excitement of a pound of herring, and may be safely ignored. What you’re here for is things hitting other things, and there’s certainly plenty of that. It is perhaps significant that the two best sequences largely eschew whizzy CGI, in favour of actual physical destruction. There is a fabulous chase, involving a mobile crane driven by the T-X, which for my money surpasses the summer’s other big helping of road-rage, served up in Matrix Reloaded. She demonstrates an almost human appetite for destruction that borders on endearing; such wilful chaos is likely counter-productive to her mission, yet she goes ahead anyway.
The other chunk that will stick in your memory is when the T-X and T-101 go toe-to-toe. No wirework, no Matrix-fu, just full-on, hardcore brutality, a brawl surely permitted by the MPAA, only because the two protagonists are robots. Walls, floors, urinals – all are just tools into which your opponent can have his/her head driven. Repeatedly. With venom.
One interesting point, is that nobody ever mentions the T-X’s gender. The concept certainly held potential for a lot of PMS-type comments, but save for one minor joke involving Victoria’s Secret, sexuality is entirely kept out of things. The T-X, with her impossibly perfect hair and the coolest red leather jacket worn by a actress playing a superviolent female robot since Eve of Destruction, just goes about her business like an evil babysitter.
After what had been a disappointing year for high-end action movies so far, Terminator 3 restores my faith in the genre. It may be a pip below the first two entries, since you get little in the way of intelligence or innovation, but it’s still a entry worthy of the name. Despite James Cameron being notable by his directorial absence, Mostow delivers everything you could want from a summer film. Here’s to Terminator 4 in 2010!
Dir: Jonathan Mostow
Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kristanna Loken, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes