Violent, Gory, Metallic, Raw and Surprisingly Touching and Humanistic

Rating: 10/10 (20 October 1999)

Although I loved TITANIC as much as anyone, THE TERMINATOR is my favorite James Cameron movie. It was raw, gritty, violent and although it has its own technological wonders, they are far fewer than the ones in Cameron's newer movies, and I liked the lack of frills. This story about a woman running for her life from a futuristic cyborg programmed to assassinate her is more human than technological. I hope that Cameron never loses that quality because I've always admired it and noticed it in every one of his films from THE TERMINATOR to ALIENS to THE ABYSS to T2 to TITANIC. There's lots of special effects, but he never fails to breathe life into his human characters. I am like a lot of people, I really like Michael Biehn and every movie I've ever seen with him in it. He never gets the kind of attention he deserves, and this early role of Kyle Reese, the human soldier who risked ultimately everything to travel over time to help protect Sarah Connor, was the first nuanced hint of his amazing talent and is still my favorite role of his. And I'm certainly glad I'm not strange for thinking that the brief love affair that the two had was a touching and fitting though very surprising ingredient to the story. To me, the talk that they have about the bleakness and pain that Reese knows is in the future and the sudden and unexpected discovery of their love is making a subtle, yet profound statement, like saying hope in the stead of hopelessness, life in the place of lifelessness, and joy and love in the place of hate and violence and pain. Okay, I'm corny, but this movie really did leave me with the corniness you read. And last but not least, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the huge, ammoral killer, a real treat, the icing on the cake, and my favorite lines: "Twelve guage auto loadah...Phase plasma rifle with a forty watt range...uzi nine millimetah!!!" : )