Awesome

Rating: 9/10 (3 September 2015)

Arnold Schwarzenegger brings presence, intensity and menace in James Cameron's futuristic sci fi nightmare. James Cameron really showed his talents as not only a writer, but as a film maker in this classic. The story is fluent, the pace is frantic and is grounded by excellent direction, great performances and good dialogue. The tone of the film is dark and its ambiance is amped up by Brad Fiedel's ominous and percussive score. Stan Winston's special make up f/x are top notch. While Arnold as The Terminator is a focal point and in this role he is perfect, it would be criminal to overlook the rest of the cast in this picture. Michael Biehn gave an exceptional, intense balls out performance here and carries the story delivering exposition while being chased by The Terminator. Linda Hamilton is great too. She shows a lot of range in this film. Lance Hendrickson and Paul Winfield give brief, but memorable performances as cops. There also are some cool cameos from Bill Paxton and Brian Thompson as punk rockers. This movie is a solid production and holds up well. I am not much of a fan of the sequels. T2 is clearly the best of the lot, but after that James Cameron is no longer in the mix and from that point on continuity and quality drop.