"You've been targeted for termination".

Rating: 8/10 (23 August 2009)

I saw this film in the cable channel listings last night, and by the time I finished debating whether to watch it or not, it was already fifteen minutes into the movie. I'd seen it before of course, and more than once, but I always have a fascination for films that struck me as groundbreaking when I saw them upon their original release. So I tuned in, and my review here has more to do with the perspective of twenty five years having passed since that Orwellian year of 1984.
First off, I enjoy the movie, no two ways about it. If you can take Dr. Silberman's (Earl Boen) word for it, Reese's story is brilliant. But even back then, a quarter decade ago, I just couldn't buy the sheer illogic of the story's main plot element. The son of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) sends Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) back in time to prevent The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenneger) from killing the waitress who's son would lead the resistance against the machines in the year 2029. Now you can only take the 'chicken or the egg' argument so far. Even Sarah Connor realized this by the end of the story when she said it made her head hurt. As laid out, this story couldn't have happened, and yet it stands as one of the most memorable sci-fi flicks of all time.
And that's OK. I give the picture high marks for it's relentless pace and the innovative ways the Cyberdine System Model 101 (that would be Arnold) found to hunt down it's quarry. By today's technology and special effects, the picture appears somewhat dated, as does Ridley Scott's "Alien", but that can't be helped any more than the constraints on an earlier era's "War of the Worlds" (1953) or "The Day The Earth Stood Still" (1951). Even the skeletal half-Terminator of the film's finale, which clearly screamed Harryhausen, managed to effectively engage this viewer in the desperate struggle for survival and victory. This adventure wouldn't be over until that single red eye went dark, not in a blaze of glory, but in the suffocating gray defeat of all it's hunter-killer instinct.
Hard to say which Sarah Connor I prefer - the buffed and muscular Linda Hamilton of the sequel, or the soft and indecisive, almost clueless Sarah of the original. Therein lies the opportunity for the growth of the character over the course of the story arc. One needs to follow it through.
One thing I realized today though, and it took twenty five years to come to it, but the title of this film is "The Terminator". I think when you're dealing with someone as huge as 'Mr. Universe' and 'Mr. Olympia' on the world bodybuilding stage, there's no room for defining the protagonist with the article 'The'. In my book, this film will always be "Terminator".