The other Six Million Dollar Man!

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2010)

$100million or more may have been spent to make the much celebrated sequel, but this, the original, stays longest in my mind, and I suspect a good many other people's too.
For all the hype about T2, that film simply does not have the narrative drive which is on show here. Fusing the concept of time travel with the theme of assassination, James Cameron's picture has echoes of such classics as Day of the Jackal; the extra twist here of course is that the Terminator would appear to be indestructible. It's as though Steve Austin (TV's Bionic Man) had transformed into Mr Hyde.
By creating a tightly written thriller, with an almost claustrophobic sense of tension to it, Cameron proved right at the start of his career he does not need a mega budget to make a great film. Indeed, it's significant to note that the two finest pictures of Cameron's career, critically at least, The Terminator and Aliens, are also the two films with the smallest budgets.
T2, Titanic and Avatar have reaped over $4 billion, but hand on heart, can anyone honestly claim those pictures, in regard to writing, direction, and a compelling storyline come anywhere close to the tension and sense of drama which he manages to evoke here in less than a couple of hours? I seriously doubt it.