Terminates the saga

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2007)

Those machines won't give up. After sending a Terminator back in time to kill John Connor's mother in the fist movie, then a T-1000 to kill a teenage John in the sequel, now the time-traveling cyborg assassin is a T-X (Kristanna Loken), targeting twenty-something John (Nick Stahl) and his future wife (Claire Danes). *Of course* the rebels send back another android (Schwarzenegger) to stop the T-X.
Terminator 3 lacks tension, mostly because of the weak villain. Loken, with her supermodel looks, is utterly wrong for the part, as she tries and fails to mimic Robert Patrick's superb performance in the previous film. Patrick, with his glacial stare and sinister body language, conveyed a deep sense of menace. Loken is terrible - her stiff walk, the comical way she tilts her head... it's a vapid, inane performance. The only mildly clever use of the new female terminator is a five-second scene where she looks at a lingerie advertisement and inflates her bust to a bigger size; it took the android only a quick glance to understand how to be more persuasive in our sexist society.
Stahl is a better actor than Furlong in Terminator 2, but writing in his scenes with Danes is cringe-inducing. Ahnold is Ahnold.
Plot is nonsensical and contradicts the whole point of the previous movies. So, is Judgement Day inevitable or not? Future *can* be altered, but only in plot-convenient ways? Sorry, time travel stories require a little more thought than that.
All would be forgiven if this boasted magnificent action, but director Mostow, who made the decent submarine flick U-571, doesn't deliver anything memorable. Say what you want of James Cameron, but the man knows his set-pieces.
5/10