James Cameron should probably be more proud of this movie than anything else

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2010)

It's hard to review a real classic. What do you say about a movie that's not just a great piece of entertainment, but is significant in the history of film?
The Terminator tells us the story of Sara Connor (Linda Hamilton), an ordinary young woman who works as a waitress and lives with a roommate, who learns she's to give birth to the savior of humanity. That's what she hears from Reece (Michael Biehn), a soldier sent back from a post-apocalyptic future where machines and men are at war. Reece was sent back to protect her from a killer cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) that also traveled from the future to kill Sara and erase her son from existence before he could lead Mankind is a successful war against their mechanical enemies.
When you say a movie is about a killer cyborg from the future and a main character who has to discover her inner hero, that doesn't necessarily sound like a classic, does it? It sounds just like another mediocre-at-best sci-fi melodrama, just like a couple dozen other forgettable B movies made every year that fill up the space between the really good films at the theater and on cable, another fancy premise used to tie together a bunch of explosions and special effects. But The Terminator is sooooo much more than that.
Virtually everything in this movie is better than it has any reason to be. Though it has a clever idea, at its core The Terminator is a fairly basic adventure story. It's not inherently deep or complex or profound. There's no real social commentary to it or any examination of essential human conflicts. It's a chase movie. One with a genuinely clever angle, but still a chase movie. That sort of film doesn't necessarily demand superior writing, acting or directing but all of those things are present in The Terminator.
I think the best way to demonstrate how good this movie is, is too simply take note of the little things done well in this film that you wouldn't see in lesser works. The casting of Linda Hamilton is one of those things. For the most important female character in the story, most films would usually cast an actress a lot more attractive than Hamilton. She's really only a bit prettier than the other women in the film and she's really not even as pretty as her co-star, Michael Biehn. But the story of Sara Connor is about a normal, unexceptional woman becoming the sort of person who changes human history. If Sara is a stunning beauty, it undermines the contrast between the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Take a look at the two cops played by Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen and the criminal psychologist played by Earl Boen. They're supporting characters whose purpose is to get the main characters from the first act into the third act. But even though they're not on screen for every long or have many lines, the actors make them into people just as real as Sara or Reece. And those three characters actually have some of the best and funniest lines of dialog in the whole movie.
Consider the character of Reece. He has less than a handful of lines of dialog in the first third of the film, but we understand more about him than any other character through his actions and his memories. Or look at how the film handles the Inevitable Exposition Dump. In this sort of genre picture, whether it's sci-fi or horror or what have you, there's always a moment when some character has to explain what's going on to another character, and by extension to the audience. The Terminator has one of those scenes, but instead of it happening during a dead space when the story comes to a stop, most of it occurs in the middle of a car chase!
You can also marvel as the visual sense Cameron brings to the entire film. From one of the earliest scenes where a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger stares down at nighttime Los Angeles to the final moment where Sara Connor drives down a lonely road as a storm approaches, Cameron is always reaching for something better than what you usually get from this sort of action flick.
The Terminator didn't just help create one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history. It's one of the foundations of the modern sci-fi action genre. It's one of those films that help you appreciate just how good movies can be. It's a classic.