You'll find this humerus.....

Rating: 6/10 (6 April 2006)

What's worse than an ordinary action picture? Hardly anything, except maybe a really bad slasher movie. In an action picture we see a fireball explode in slow motion while in the foreground an actor dives towards the camera. A speeding car hits an obstacle and does a grand jetee. Everyone's hand grips an ugly gun. The disparate hero and heroine finally fall for one another and close the deal between blood baths. The musical score pounds us into excruciating insensibility. A pinned hand gropes for a weapon. The script is sparsely sprinkled with wisecracks to the wise.
"The Terminator" has all of these clichés and more, and yet, the gol danged thing hangs together. It's as if you'd taken all your leftovers, thrown them into a pot, shaken some lesser-used seasoning onto it, cooked it, and hoped for the best. It isn't that there's very much distinctive about the film, except maybe its all-gray pallet and the overall darkness. Of course it's easier to shoot in LA at night when the city is empty of all human tissue. If you want to make a movie about the last person on earth, shoot it in downtown LA on a weekend. Come to think of it, they already have -- "The Omega Man." It's not possible to explain the success of this flick. The only thing you can say is that it succeeds on its own terms. It has no moral, like "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," no resonance beyond its violence. If the acting is good enough that's largely because so little is called for. The best performance is given by the two cops. Arnold comes in a close second. His best moments come when he is not on screen but has been replaced by a completely metallic skeletal cyborg that is blown to bits -- an ear here, a humerus there -- until he is finally extinguished by this gigantic duck press.
That's not to put down Linda Hamilton. She is plump lipped, hair blown, and sexy. She was my supporting player in another film, one that I think everyone would agree is a masterpiece of cinematic high art, a nonpareil of poetics, and an unforgettable action drama in itself -- "King Kong Lives." Michael Biene falls a bit short of the bar set by Linda Hamilton.
But what does any of that matter? You can watch the thing repeatedly. It's almost hypnotic.