Soulless Movie

Rating: 3/10 (6 June 2009)

The title I wrote above basically describes what me and everyone felt in the theater at the end of movie. Somebody should really get up enough courage and say to Hollywood producers that filling a movie with lots of CGI , pretty explosions and cool looking fight/car chase scenes does not equal to movie making as a cinematic art form. Mindless action and gunfire does not compensate bad and patchy storytelling...
At the beginning of movie it felt something was off. The short scene showing Marcus at death row tries to be dramatic but it is not. The scene and lines said by Marcus and Doctor pass off so fast that it feels forced. Then we do leap into future to 2018 exactly. 15 years after Judgement Day the war between human resistance and Skynet is going on full scale. At this point we gave up watching a sensible dramatic acting or story because US Military Hardware Advertisement starts. Really for the first half of the movie all story ( full of holes by the way ) as it laid out , performance of actors or themes or messages of plot ( if there is any ) is secondary background noise. All of them can be discarded. What we see in primary are A-10 ground ground attack jets launching missiles and pounding their targets , Vietnam-era Huey transport helicopters fly by and men in combat gear carrying assault rifles firing at bandanna wearing terminators ( I am not kidding those terminators and art director or producer of this movie have a horrible fashion sense ) , Hunter-Killer or motorbike terminators are chasing , blowing up pick-ups , cars etc......
It is as if watching Transformers or Iron Man ( two movies I strongly dislike ) again. In visual style , sense and action McG just rips off those two horrible productions of last year. Actors and actresses do their best but writing of character development is very weak ( except Sam Worthington who stand out among others because most of the movie is about his character Marcus ) so Christian Bale does nothing but shooting or fighting or saying heroic things and others are not so bright also ( I especially cringed when Moon Bloodgood or Common spoke...)
Towards the end there is supposedly big showdown between humans and terminators at the heart of machine except it was copied from metal/steel factory scenes in Terminator 2 : Judgement Day here and there...T-800 makes a cameo appearance which is silly at best...After a combination of luck and most convenient factors and coincidences humans triumph...
Well that said Terminator 4 shows how much Hollywood and mainstream visual entertainment sector ( like TV ) has regressed more and more.. Do not bother to spend money on T:4. Just watch Transformers ( still horrible by the way ) instead they are quite similar...