One of a bunch of great 70s and 80s sci-fi movies.

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2009)

The film that made Cameron and Arnie into A listers holds up pretty well after 25 years, with exciting action sequences, laconic cops, a legendary one-liner and a powerful depiction of a post-apocalypse world devastated by nuclear war. In 1984, when the film came out, this still felt like something that might be just around the corner.
This is the very ideal of high concept - a cyborg from the future comes back to kill the mother of a future resistance leader, thus preventing the humans from defeating a powerful super-computer that's wiped out most of humanity. The premise is actually borrowed from a Harlan Ellison-scripted t.v. episode of The Outer Limits, and Cyborg 2087, a t.v. flick based on a novel by Martin Caidin, which also inspired The Six Million Dollar Man. Whew!
It's what Cameron does with it that matters. The movie holds your attention from the get-go and Arnie was never better as the soulless, murderous Terminator of the title. Michael Biehn gives a wonderful performance as a future resistance fighter sent back in time to prevent the killing. "It's just him and me" he says at one point. The time machine's been destroyed, stranding him in 1984, and his cause is something he's willing to die for. Yet Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen raise scene-stealing to an art-form as the two cops trying to fathom it all out. Stan Winstone's stop motion effects may have dated but they were state of the art at time the film was made, and Brad Fiedel's memorable pounding main theme will stay with you long after the credits have faded. This deserves to be counted with Star Wars and Blade Runner as one of the great sci-fi movies of its time.