Overall Rating
  Awesome: 19.48%
Worth A Look: 38.96%
Average: 16.23%
Pretty Bad: 11.36%
Total Crap: 13.96%
12 reviews, 236 user ratings
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| Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines |
by Erik Childress
"Incredible Action Sequences Make This Worthy To Carry The Name"
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It’s been a long time since I’ve said I just saw a movie with some balls. Perhaps not such a stretch considering the Terminator series is full of enough raging testosterone to get off a dead virgin. But sequelitis rarely comes with an attached set between its legs and I didn’t think it was possible for a late third entry in a God-like cinematic franchise to be anything less than a unich without its creator. And in the action department, James Cameron is a God. So save for a few choice fanatics, Jonathan Mostow could then be Jesus.Cameron’s sci-fi action bonanzas were, like it or not, clearly one of the inspirations behind the legacy of the Matrix worlds. Machines gaining power over the world and reducing humankind to be its slaves for all eternity until man would rise up and overtake them. That man was John Connor who was originally set for termination back in 1984 before his mother Sarah could give birth. The mission failed. 10 years later (movie-time) a second, more powerful Terminator was born and the original model was programmed to be its protector. The circle should have come up full, but the filmmakers have found a backdoor in and invited audiences once again.
John Connor (Nick Stahl) has been living the hermit’s life, dropping out of society, walking the earth so no futuristic robot could ever track him down. Of course, his lieutenants are just as vulnerable and we’re introduced to new upgrade, the TX (Kristanna Loken) who enters the picture naked sporting the same convenient hair placement that benefited Daryl Hannah in Splash. And sooner than you can say “bocci balls” she’s taking out teenagers at close range left and right. Along with John, her secondary target is the unchristened destiny of veterinarian Kate Brewster (Claire Danes, quiverlipping her way to another crying fit which is as guaranteed in one of her films as Arnold saying “I’ll be back”.) Thankfully, time travelers come in pairs and another reprogrammed T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is there to protect them.
The logic of the film can be picked apart. Then again, the paradoxal nature of the first two were already hanging on the suspension of disbelief. Why do the machines wait so long (in-between movies) to plot their attacks on the pre-re-sis-tance Connor? How does Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, a self-proclaimed obsolete model now have a preprogrammed study in basic human philosophy when it originally took someone to say “fuck you, asshole” for it to stick in his craw-filled memory of repeated catch phrases? Hell, the films can’t even get John’s timeline right. Born on Feb. 28, 1985, if he was 13 when the second chapter occurred (as he states here) then “Judgment Day” couldn’t have been on Aug. 27, 1997. Logically, the film follows the tacked-on garden variety bare minimum explanations that unplanned trilogies require. But, when all is little said and done, the film delivers directly in the department that has become the staple of the series. ACTION!
Anyone out there (and there’s more than a few of you) who are tired of the hokey, overused FX-laden action sequences and the poor man “close-up” car chases are in for a genuine treat. An entertaining warmup at an animal hospital notwithstanding, the chase sequence at the half-hour mark is one of the greatest you’ll ever see. Forget what you’ve heard or seen in the summer of 2003 about The Italian Job and 2 Fast 2 Furious or 2002's The Bourne Identity, because that is Matchbox city on a broken track compared to the seat-shaking brilliance of this sequence. It’s impossible to spoil it since words could never even suggest justice to it, but when you have authority vehicles under remote control and enough destruction to rival The Blues Brothers on a continuous loop, the idea that virtually no computers were involved in its creation is both an ironic twist and a tribute to the viewers. It just never stops and why would you want it to. (A portion of this sequence exists because Arnold put up his own dough to cover it. Bravo, Arnold. You show you still do know what the fans want.)
Mostow has proven himself a skilled action director in his only two previous efforts, Breakdown and U-571, both featuring cat-and-mouse games and exciting chases on the road and underwater. The challenge to follow what Cameron brings to the party beleagured even the likes of David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet in the Alien series, but Mostow is up to it. If you’re counting sequences, it may not hit you until its all over that there’s only about four. But when they come, especially at a meager running time of 109 minutes, they engulf all the logic gaps, any lackluster in the talking head moments and provide audiences the action they’ve deserved for so long.
The balls factor doesn’t even begin to define itself by the decision to favor stuntmen and demolition over CGI, but by using its place in the Terminator universe to chill an audience’s spine. Surprises usually only manifest themselves in the “I-can’t-believe-they-did-that” realm of the action sequences, but it takes a handful of moxie to have us leaving the theater with the kind of soul-shaking sense of horror that ranks in the science fiction canon alongside Planet of the Apes and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.I was as skeptical as anyone about the prospect of another Terminator film. A series already reaching a natural end 12 years ago combined with a star on the fade usually doesn’t add up to anything but greed operating a defibrillator. Terminator 3 is far from a perfect film and will give the Matrix brethren a chance to reload on the arguments for a thinking man’s action film. But that trilogy has the foreplay and the cigarette afterwards. T1 & T2 may have had that too, but T3 is just the sex and it’s enormously satisfying on that level. It’s got the sweat, the danger, more than a few money shots and most importantly, the balls. Bocci balls.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7893&reviewer=198
originally posted: 07/02/03 17:27:10
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USA
02-Jul-2003 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
17-Jul-2003
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