The best film I've seen of 2003

Rating: 9/10 (21 July 2003)

7/21/2003
WARNING!! WARNING!! MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE! DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET!!
Still with me? Good.
"Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" is not only my favorite film of the "Terminator" trilogy, but it's also the best film I've seen of this year so far!
We all know the "Terminator" story: John Connor is the leader of the human resistance in the year 2029, helping people fight against the deadly machines that try to wipe out humanity after they take over on August 29th, 1997. Connor ultimately destroys the machines, but before he does, the machines send robots back in time to kill Connor before he can become humanity's savior.
In the first film, a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) was sent back in time to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she gives birth to John (later his date of birth revealed to be the year 1985), but it fails.
"Terminator 2: Judgment Day" took place in 1991, where a 10-year-old John (what? If he's 10, shouldn't it have happened in 1995?) is almost killed by a T-1000 robot (Robert Patrick), but it fails when another Terminator (again, Schwarzenegger, re-programmed to protect John and becomes a father figure to him) helps the Connors apparently stop SkyNet, stops the T-1000 and later lets Sarah help it "self-terminate."
The film revolves around 23-year-old John Connor (Nick Stahl), who wanders from place to place and wishes not to be found, for fear that the machines of the future-yet-to-come will try and kill him.
Guess what? He's right.
Judgment Day wasn't stopped. It was only delayed.
The Terminatrix, or T-X (Kristanna Loken), is sent back in time to kill Connor. Since Connor has no connections by an address or phone number, the T-X instead starts to kill his future lieutenants in the war to come one by one. Two of the TX's targets are veterinarian Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) and her father (David Andrews), who has a key role in the activation of SkyNet, the sentient program of the future machines. Kate is particularly important - she shares a past with John, and a future (turns out she becomes his wife, his second in command and the mother of his kids).
Later, the Terminator (again, again played Schwarzenegger) arrives in our time after it is re-programmed by Kate to protect her and John in this time (hope you understood all that). Anyway, the Terminator eventually finds them and tries to save them from the T-X, but it also must be careful around the new, deadlier T-X, who can destroy and control other machines as well.
The fight scenes and visual effects are nicely done, and cast itself does a good job with their roles. Schwarzenegger, Danes and Stahl give great performances, especially since Danes goes through the most in the film - she loses her father and fiancée, Scott (Mark Famiglietti), to the T-X and does a nice job in the scenes where she's with John. She even takes out a machine with a machine gun while trying to stop the machines (to which John admits, "You remind me of my mother.")
Even Loken makes the T-X out to be a worthy foe of the Terminator (though she lacks the creepiness factor of Patrick's T-1000 from "T2").
What I especially liked was the lack of gore than what the first two films had (though it has its gross-factor moments, like when the T-X punches her hand through a cop's chest), and the humor. For example: the Terminator arrives in our time naked and arrives at a strip club on ladies' night. He tells a male stripper in a leather jacket outfit to "take off his clothes" so he can wear them. When the stripper says, "Talk to the hand," the Terminator grabs his wrist, nearly breaking it in his grip as he does, and puts the hand to his lips as he says, "Now."
There's even a nice cameo by Earl Boen as Dr. Silberman, and the plot twists are a nice touch (the Terminator Kate sent back to protect her and John in this film reveals the future Kate does so only after it kills John in the future).
But nothing beats the shocking twist ending, when John and Kate learn the grim truth about SkyNet.
Anyway, there one, confusing flaw that keeps this film from being perfect. John is 23 in this film, and as mentioned before, he was even born in 1985 and was 13 when he last met the Terminator in "T2". The film also says Hamilton's Sarah Connor was diagnosed with leukemia after the events of "T2", given six months to live but she fought it for 3 years to make sure that on August 29th, 1997, Judgment Day (the day the machines took over) never happened (add to the fact that if "T2" WAS set in 1995, that Sarah would've died in 1998 or so, over a year after Judgment Day's date, and you have more confusion).
The time-line doesn't make sense. Had it been done correctly, John would've been about 7 in 1992, 13 in 1998 (one year after the original date Judgment Day would have occurred on) and 19 in 2003. It's best to forget the timeline, and if you're new to the "Terminator" movies, then this gripe may not bother you so much.
Still, despite the fact that I found other films this summer to be either EXTREMELY disappointing ("Hulk" and "X2") or just down-right awful ("Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and "Pirates of the Caribbean"), "T3" was a welcome surprise for me.
I yearn to see a "T4", in the hopes that Arnold's famous quote of "I'll be back" lives up to its promise.