A hundred times smarter than its closest competitors

Rating: 6/10 (4 December 2002)

This film has brains, an unusal occurance in action movies. Many of our greatest "genre" films often look like they are following that genre style, but incorporate a twist to give extra meaning. The "extra meaning" behind this movie is that those who have the power to kill others, should exericse restraint and choose not to.
In Terminator 2, you'll notice the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenneger) doesn't kill a single person (he uses scaring/maiming tactics), yet the only people who kill humans are ironically, other humans. This idea is summed up at the end when Sarah Connor proclaims that if a robot (the T-800) can learn the value of human life, perhaps we can too. The whole plot follows the theme of "save humanity from itself", implying we are our own worst enemy. We also see Sarah Connor deciding to not kill Miles Dyson (Joe Morton) when she sees him up-close and surrounded by his young son and wife even though she had resolved to kill him earlier.
The best parts of the movie is first and foremost the action, but the little details go a long way towards helping as well. One of my favorite small details were the physical brilliance behind both Terminator's actions. When Arnold had to drive the truck past the SWAT team into the building to pull out Sarah and and John, he swerved the car so the rear end would pull perfectly into the back allowing them to escape unharmed by the SWAT. This is just one example among many indicating the amount of work gone into writing the physical direction of both Terminators, and the logic involved really is just taken for granted but can be appreciated.

This is a definite action classic because its incredibly smarter, on many more levels than other leading edge action films, such as John Woo's Hard Boiled. This film has brains because James Cameron is one our great cinematic geniuses. Get this on DVD!