Shockingly Brilliant

Rating: Null/10 (23 January 2004)

By what right does the third installment of a series whose last entry wrapped ten years ago - a summer popcorn feature, centered around a "hot chick," and produced absent the writer/director who made the legendary originals - have any business being as objectively great as this film?

Take away the laugh lines - of which there were, admittedly, too many - and you have one of the darkest and most violent science fictions films ever made. From the brutal assassinations of teenagers in their fast food jobs and make-out parties, to John Connor jamming a loaded pistol into his own temple, to the rampage of the prototypical Skynet killbots, and the inevitable and unstoppable nuclear holocaust, this was far and away the bleakest of the Terminator series. Nowhere near the emotional weight of the second feature, but also nowhere near the obnoxious childishness it also displayed in parts - had anyone in the audience of T3 felt anywhere near as much loathing for the person of John Connor as they had in T2?

What action there was, was indeed brilliantly produced - the crane sequence is the best chase filmed in the series to date. The action, however, was secondary to the critical advancement of the base plotline - we now, at last, have had Judgement Day, and the only place the series could possibly go from here, is to the War of the Machines, for which we have all been waiting.
I had expected little from this film, and avoided it in the theatre. It's a prejudice I now regret.