One of the most breathtaking modern action science fiction films...

Rating: 9/10 (27 July 2003)

In one of the most intelligent and unhesitating science fiction films of the 1950s, Robert Wise equipped "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with technical marvels, chief among them the huge robot Gortthe prototype, Michael Rennie suggests, for a global police force... Similar mechanical giants have been lumbering out of space-ships ever since...
In "Devil Girl from Mars," the giant refrigerator robot Chai hunts for virile Scotsmen and find John Laurie, while in 'Target Earth,' the Venusian robots imitate Gort in projecting rays from their heads but take the idea a step further and make the rays lethal...
In Stanley Kubrick's 'mythological documentary,' HAL 9000 computer is the most human character in the movie... But in James Cameron's breakthrough feature, there is, indeed, 'a storm coming in.' His 'Terminator' is a systematic metal, 'surrounded by living tissue,' an invulnerable cyborg, part man, part machine, with whom 'it can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with.'
The film opens with two naked men appearing in two different parts of Los Angeles' darkened streets... One is tall and powerfully built, the other is compact and muscular... Both men seek the same person, a small and delicate blond woman by the name of Sarah Connor...
Arnold Schwarzenegger is terrifying as the 'killer cyborg' who 'looks like Death rendered in steel.' He has searched the phone book and brutally shot to death other unfortunate women who bear the same name... He is sent back from the future to present-day (1984) to kill the mother of an unborn enemy...
Schwarzenegger moves with inhuman speed bounding like a panther, scanning methodically with dominated blue eyes his surroundings, and in a perfect simulation of voice, he is on the track of his victim... He examines his weapons with precise movements, drives expressionlessly, and kills without pity, or remorse, or fear... It is a role that suits his talent perfectly...
Michael Biehn seems scared by traumas of others wars... His face outlines a long burn scar... He tries to stop Schwarzenegger's attempts to be carried out... He is sinister in his long coat... His whole life has been combat... He identifies himself as Reese, a soldier from the future, assigned to protect Sarah at all costs... For him it is an honor, a chance to meet the legend... We feel his pain and anguish when he said: 'That terminator is out there. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!'
Linda Hamilton is quiet convincing as the strong innocent prey, targeted for termination, momentarily disoriented, vaguely disturbed... She feels a blind panic boiling up within her, a lightning blot of terror greater than she could ever imagine... She is in a daze, paralyzed, shivering silently, uncontrollably... Her fragile personality disguises a hidden force she did't know she had...
Cameron makes a successful move behind the lens in one of the most breathtaking modern action science fiction films...