Passionless, cookie-cutter, derivative & dull

Rating: 1/10 (12 June 2004)

First and foremost, if they couldn't get James Cameron on board to helm a second sequel to "The Terminator", they just shouldn't have bothered, but this is Hollywood and so they pressed on, engaging the services of one Jonathan Morrow, a director you've never heard of before and aren't likely to hear of again anytime soon: simply put, this is ONE LOUSY DIRECTOR! True, no one is ever going to accuse the first two films of being part of the greatest movies ever made, and while I enjoyed the first (it was what it was: fun and creepy, even) and hated the second (too full of itself, too full of its own supposed "importance", it's James "King of the World" Cameron's overbloated message movie saying 'war is wrong!'. This just in), one can say at the very least they both had a passion, that whatever their faults the director, his stars, the screenwriter, etc., BELIEVED IN IT. Not this time, baby: from the word 'go', there isn't an original thought or idea on display, either behind or in front of the cameras, and it even goes so far as to rip its own franchise off, and not too well, either. James Cameron supposedly didn't want to do this film because he felt, correctly, that "T2" completed the story, and so THIS film becomes one predictable rehash of everything you've seen before, and NOT just in "The Terminator" movies: if you've seen even just a handful of action flicks, especially in the last few years, you'll be hard-pressed not to accurately guess what happens in each scene, or each shot, right down to the FX, which, after "T2", are also derivative and seem...been-there-done-that. One could hope that its stars might make up for the director's deficiencies but that's a lost cause, too: Nick Stahl, a not-untalented young actor, assumes the role of John Connor from Edward Furlong but doesn't have Furlong's sense of star-crossed vulnerability - he merely comes off cocky, and aware at every moment he's taken over a role ill-suited to him; as for the always-angst-ridden Claire Danes (seriously in danger of becoming this era's Jennifer Jason Leigh if she doesn't make a film in which she's happy, laughs, smiles, breaks wind, whatever!), she has the thankless task of replacing Linda Hamilton (this is driven home in one unintentionally funny moment when, in all seriousness, not long after Danes learns she and Stahl will be man and wife in the future and she's grabbed a gun and mowed down a machine-on-the-loose, Stahl says, "You remind of my mother", which gives proof that this film is not only written by a man but by a man who doesn't understand the first thing about women. I dare ANY man to say those words - "You remind me of my mother" - to a woman he likes or loves, then sit back and ruminate the possibility of a long, LONG, lonely existence.) Unfortunately, Danes has about 2 expressions: despair and disbelief. Both of these are understandable reactions to learning there are actual robotic lifeforms running amok in L.A. (as opposed to those making films like this), but her performance is wearing. HOWEVER, at least she GIVES a performance, unlike the Barbie doll chosen to be the Big Bad Terminator: for his role in "T2", Robert Patrick says he perfected his creepy, shark-like stare by studying birds of prey, and he was entirely successful in instilling fear; the young actress here (OK, so I forget her name - it isn't all that important since I seriously doubt you'll be hearing much about her) resembles nothing more than the over-blonde love child of Christina Ricci and Jamie Pressly, all work-the-runway supermodel swagger and pout, and ZERO menace; her attempts at trying to be "fearsome" - which consists of nothing more than lowering her chin and trying to stare through her tweezed eyebrows with her perfectly made-up eyes (apparently, in this terrible future, cyborgs - in addition to being the perfect killing machine - are also learned disciples of Estee Lauder) - are, at best, ridiculous, and often faintly hilarious. As for Arnold, well, all the concealer and pancake make-up in the world cannot hide what the camera makes GLARINGLY OBVIOUS: he's a little long-in-the-tooth for this kind of thing. At times, he practically seems to have been dipped in formaldehyde: you'll notice AT NO TIME is ANY strong light upon his face in ANYTHING but distant shots (where it may not be him, anyway), and all close-ups seem oddly darkened (Elizabeth Taylor used that trick, too: a black stocking over the lens to smooth out any tell-tale lines.) His appearance also smacks of desperation, reaching back to a role that he thought might put him back on top, after a grueling period where seemingly every film he'd made disappeared nearly without a trace. Actually, that, more than anything else, is what is wrong with this movie: the stink of desperation. Come to think of it, that ISN'T the worst thing; no...worse yet is that all concerned have succeeded in making an action film that's not just lifeless, it's dead-on-arrival.