Better than I expected

Rating: 8/10 (23 May 2009)

I will admit that I wasn't expecting much from this movie. After the jokey "Terminator 3" I figured the best days of this franchise were long gone. Still, I decided to give this movie a chance since it was telling a story that I have wanted to see since I saw the first "Terminator" film, and I'm glad that I did. It's not perfect, and it certainly isn't as good as the first two films in the series, but it still manages to be an entertaining sci-fi action movie.
The thing that really made this movie work for me was the setting. We finally get to see the war against the machines as it was foretold way back in the first "Terminator," and it doesn't disappoint. The movie does a great job at showing this hellish new world in which humanity is forced to live in city ruins and dusty wastelands in which they can be attacked at practically any time by nearly indestructible machines. It's bleak, grim, and absolutely the last place anybody would want to live. The war seems almost hopeless, and if not for the promises made by a possibly crazy woman via old cassette tapes that her son is destined to lead humanity to victory I would imagine that everyone would just give up the fight. The action scenes are effective as well. For the most part they look like battle scenes from old war movies, except the combatants on one side are futuristic unmanned tanks and metallic skeletons. It's simple, but it works because it's easy to follow and still manages to be very exciting. They do tend to occasionally go a little over-the-top towards the end, but since it's a sci-fi film about humanity fighting against killer androids it never feels out of place.
I guess the only thing in this movie that didn't quite work for me is that the acting is kind of hit and miss. While I thought Sam Worthington was good as Marcus Wright (the real star of the film, who plays a role in the story that I don't want to spoil here) and Anton Yelchin's portrayal of a teenage Kyle Reese was pretty spot-on, I didn't always buy Christian Bale as John Connor. There were times when I took his demeanor to be that of a haunted, shell-shocked soldier who presses on only because he knows that it's his destiny to do so, but there were also times when he just came off as an actor sleepwalking through a role. He's supposed to be a messianic hero, and although I like the idea of the legendary status of a hero being exaggerated for the sake of drama, Bale just comes off as stiff, humorless, and boring. It's really a shame since I like Bale, and I was really excited about seeing him in this role. Bryce Dallas Howard is another actress that I usually like, but she's wasted here; she seriously isn't given one solid scene as Connor's pregnant wife. I tended to forget she was even in this movie at times.
Aside from a rather boring savior of humanity, "Terminator: Salvation" is still a pretty good sci-fi action film. It's not the greatest film in the series, but it has a decidedly different feel from the other films that makes it worthwhile.