He's back!

Rating: 7/10 (20 July 2003)

While not exactly up to the excellence of the first two films I do think this is a worthy sequel to this franchise. Story has John Conner (Nick Stahl) now in his 20's who is basically a drifter and he is still haunted by the events that took place a decade ago. One night in Beverly Hills a new terminator appears (Kristanna Loken) and it takes on the appearance of a beautiful woman and its mission is of course to find Conner. Conner is hiding out at a veterinarians office and early one morning Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) who works there comes to work and finds John. Turns out the two of them went to high school together and suddenly the terminator T-X shows up. Meanwhile, in the desert the older model of terminator appears (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his mission is to make sure John and Kate survive Judgement Day because their children will become important in the future. The old terminator saves them both and there is a very destructive car chase that involves police cars, fire trucks and a big crane. They go to a funeral home in the desert and find the coffin of Sarah Conner which is full of weapons. Kate's father is an Air Force officer named Robert Brewster (David Andrews) and he is in charge of a top secret program that involves this countries weapons system. Its the key to Judgement Day and the three of them race to his installation and try and stop the impending destruction. This film was directed by Jonathan Mostow who demonstrated in "U-571" that he could handle a difficult assignment like this. Its not quite up to the first two films and one reason would be the special effects. T2 gave us effects that would change the way films would look. This one does not, but its not that these effects are bad. Their not! But at the same time they're not ground breaking. And Loken as the terminatrix just doesn't come across as we would expect. She is so beautiful and I found it symbolic that she entered our time by emerging out of a Beverly Hills shop window! Its symbolic because she has the look of a mannequin. T2 didn't make Robert Patrick a huge star and I doubt that this will for Loken either. But this still is a very exciting and entertaining film. One thing that this film did was to make sure Schwarzenegger act like a cyborg and not show human emotions. T2 had one glaring flaw in it that still makes me angry to this day. Its at the end of the film where he tells Edward Furlong "I'm sorry". Sorry? He's a cyborg! He doesn't feel emotions. And in this film that mistake does not happen, thank god. I was so relieved by that. The film sets up itself for another sequel and it does so with a dark ending that was more in line with the first film. It didn't come across to me as a silly and contrived ending that was only put in for money purposes. I think a continuation is essential and the ending is believable as far as this story is concerned. Arnold has his trademark "One liners" throughout the film and in one humorous scene actor Earl Boen reprises his role as Dr. Peter Silberman and along with Schwarzenegger he is the only actor to appear in all three films. The first Terminator was a brutally dark and brilliant film and the second was a very interesting story with ground breaking special effects. This film is not up to those two but it is a worthy sequel that is never boring for one second. On a simple level, its just plain fun to watch Schwarzenegger in these films. One of the most indelible characters in movie history. Lets see T4!