Surprisingly moving and exciting apocalyptica

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2003)

There's not an action filmmaker alive who does it better than James Cameron. He's given the world "Terminator," "The Abyss," "True Lies," "Aliens," and his masterpiece... "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Cameron is one of few filmmakers I've seen who can take the details of a previous film and apply them with new and better insights in a sequel. He did the same thing with "Aliens," which he wrote an entire script for when he was given the following starting point: "Ripley comes back to life." This time around, Cameron gets to expand upon his own material, bringing back to life a feared character from his earlier "Terminator," and making him a protagonist whilst complementing him with an equally fearsome villain. Arnold Schwarzenegger is simply unforgettable in "T2".
It is the year 2029 AD, and humanity is embroiled in a struggle for its survival. On August 29, 1997, Judgment Day occurred, an event where the entire human race nearly came into extinction from nuclear bombardment by the world's most powerful nations, leaving machines gradually begin to take over. In the future, John Connor has become a great leader for the human resistance, and an attempt was previously made on his life when a cybernetic organism, a T-100 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) was sent back in time to kill his mother, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), before he was born. Luckily for humanity, his efforts were thwarted by Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), a soldier sent back in time to protect her.
Many years pass, John Connor (Edward Furlong) is eventually born, and is forced to grow up without a mother to guide him. Her visions of the dark future have placed her in a mental hospital, where the unforgiving Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen) will not set her free even despite good behaviour. Unbeknownst to all of them, the system that controls the machines in the future, Skynet, has sent a new, more advanced model of the terminator back in time, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). This terminator is made of pure mercury, and can transform into any shape or image it encounters. Its mission is to find John Connor as a child and destroy him.

In the future, the adult John Connor somehow found out about this plot to destroy him, and sends a model T-101 (Schwarzenegger again) to protect him as a child. This sets the course for a long chase during which John Connor and the Terminator must free his mother from mental prison, destroy all precursors of the Skynet system, all the while fleeing the menacing T-1000, who proves harder to elude and destroy than even the T-100! John, Sarah and the Terminator are now embroiled in a race against time to save the Earth from Judgment Day and preventing the war against the machines before it happens.
The magic of James Cameron's filmmaking is that he knows how to create consistency and add action appropriate to the story. He often engulfs his films in dark blue tones, and that's no exception here. His action scenes in all his films are relentless and violent, just as action should be. He takes no notice for what his audience can stomach, only what he feels is appropriate for length and for helping the storyline. He reaches new heights of special-effects advancement with T2, making spectacular use of only a total five minutes of CGI effects. The T-1000 is one of the most deadly and spectacular villains ever put on screen, and remains so to this day (it's 2003).
Not that the film is without its flaws. I've never been a fan of Linda Hamilton. Frankly, her whining and her gasping and panting all the way through the 2.5-hour film got quite tiring for me. Her character was absolutely necessary, but there are other ways to communicate a repressed soul who fears the future. Nor was I a fan of Brad Fiedel's score as a piece of music. The score functions for the atmosphere, communicating a sense of dread all the way through that Jonathan Mostow could not duplicate for "T3"; however, if one listens to the score on CD, you wouldn't believe how horrible it sounds as music.
Aside from its small flaws, Arnold Schwarzenegger is never better than his performance here, delivering again his famous lines "I'll be back" and "Hasta la Vista Baby" with a conviction and brutality that's so convincing it's almost humorous. Edward Furlong delivers an impressive debut performance, playing a child who becomes an unwilling victim of fate and making it totally believable in the process. Schwarzenegger and Furlong have an excellent father-son chemistry that actually becomes touching in the end.
With "T2", Cameron has crafted a modern classic. Its beautiful special-effects, cinematography, and disheartening sense of dread will remain for decades in the collective memories of sci-fi, action and cinema fans alike. 4 1/2 stars on a five star scale.