Entertaining if you accept its many flaws

Rating: 4/10 (22 May 2009)

Considering this shares the same writers as the seriously flawed T3, and the questionable choice of relative unknown McG as director, and the questionable neutering of the series' feel via PG-13... it's OK for what it is: a mindless action flick.
There are many truly bad things about the movie, but for me there were also just enough good things to balance those out & leave me entertained. This is not a Terminator film at its core, especially because the terminators don't have the ruthless killing attitude they did in previous films. Instead of punching through a human's chest (T1 & T3), or stabbing someone in the head with its knife arm (T2), the terminators here just throw people around & punch real hard. It's simply not the same type of terror you feel in the earlier movies.
That said, I honestly have to give McG big props for some of the action scenes. The bridge chase and the early assault (and escape) on the Skynet base were very well done and intense. McG's choice to do one-take shots, and the camera panning for full 360 degree views of battles was impressive. Pretty much every scene with Marcus was awesome, thanks to Sam Worthington.
This is overall on par with T3, which hurts to say. T3 was a dull rehash of T2, but was overall decently produced. T4 is a fresh story for the most part, & does have very well done scenes, but then it also has enough cheese & truly awful scenes to make you realize how shoddy some of the production aspects for this must have been.
With a better, more focused script, and no rating restriction, I honestly believe McG really could've made something that respected & would be respected by Terminator fans. As is, this is just an OK action flick with a Terminator influenced side story.