Advertisement |
Overall Rating
  Awesome: 19.68%
Worth A Look: 38.73%
Average: 16.19%
Pretty Bad: 11.43%
Total Crap: 13.97%
12 reviews, 243 user ratings
|
|
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines |
by Greg Muskewitz
"Reduced to regular summer movie mayhem."

|
It’s a generic action-packed sequel (or threequel, or what-have-you), falling way behind the previous two, but as far as summer movies, and particularly the junky sequels of 2003, it is ahead of the rest.The action is nicely set-up and executed, and while it is pretty short on plot (it boils down to one long, extended action scene), save for a spurt here and there and the layout for T4, I must say it isn’t disagreeable to sit through. (Although Ah-nold’s one-liner in this one, “Talk to the hand,” is a bit passé.) The cybernetic organism that Schwarzenegger reprises from the previous two Terminator films is not the originating terminator that self-sacrificed itself at the sequel’s end, but rather a replication made to appeal to its creators by similar appearance. Unable to RSVP for the delayed but unavoidable Judgment Day, are Edward Furlong (replaced by a more diffident and exacerbated Nick Stahl) and Linda Hamilton, conveniently written off as dead (though her tomb provides an arsenal of help). James Cameron doesn’t return to the director’s chair for that matter, either, perhaps allowing this film to progress forwardly without ego, over-complication, but as well, without strategic convolution and the overall drive behind the two he was responsible for. Taking over, Jonathan Mostow (Breakdown, U-571) keeps things smooth by sticking to his predecessor’s formula, if not perhaps a little too smoothly. Strangely, the TX villain (“the Terminatrix”) isn’t any more harrowing than the T-1000, but the fight sequences between the two terminators, aside from lacking the awe-inspiring reaction to the special effects and CGI that were so new in 1991, is oddly misogynous and pro-domestic violence. With Claire Danes and Kristanna Loken.[Worth-seeing.]
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7893&reviewer=172 originally posted: 04/23/04 22:10:06
printer-friendly format
|
 |
USA 02-Jul-2003 (R)
UK N/A
Australia 17-Jul-2003
|
|