'Terminator 3' amps up energy of contemporary thriller series
By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service
Because the first two Terminator movies are rooted in messianic prophecies, the title of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" seemed like an ill omen. Would the revolution in computer-generated imagery led by director James Cameron in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" overwhelm the third installment, arriving in the wake of the proudly digital "Matrix Reloaded"?
R, for profanity, graphic violence and nudity 110 minutes Warner Bros. Pictures
I'm pleased to say that "T3" as it will forever be known, is a resolutely old-fashioned movie, which is not to say that it doesn't boast the best bytes you can buy in Silicon Valley, or that the animatronics by master manipulator Stan Winston aren't state of the art. But director Jonathan Mostow, who replaces Cameron as the keeper of this dark yet entertaining doomsday myth, so deftly integrates the mechanical magic into "T3" that it feels like a film that could have been in the `70s, when sci-fi movies made their belated transition from bulky space-suited horse opera to sleek cerebralism.
Kristanna Loken and Arnold Schwarzenegger are machines with opposing missions.
And that's not to say that a lot of things don't get blowed up real good in "T3." Or that Arnold Schwarzenegger, returning as an older, less lethal but more inventive version of his "T2" cyborg, has eschewed speaking in tag lines. "T3" is not just a rare example of a worthy sequel to a sequel, it's a rare example of a worthy summer movie, one that does its job above and beyond the fast-food call of duty. It may be serving frozen fish, but what it lacks in freshness is made up for proficiency and presentation.
Working from a script credited to John Brancato and Michael Ferris, Mostow returns the story to the present day. John Connor (Nick Stahl of "In the Bedroom," replacing Edward Furlong), the fellow destined to lead the revolution against the machines that will turn the world into their personal scrap heap, is no longer a conflicted teen. He's 22, living, as he says in the downbeat narration that opens the film, "off the grid." To avoid having his whereabouts detected by Skynet, the electronic dictator that rules the future, he drifts from place to place, leaving no trail — paper, plastic or bar code.
This proves only the smallest of setbacks to the latest Terminator cyborg Skynet has dispatched back in time to prevent Connor from achieving his destiny. The new T-X model (Kristanna Loken), like Lara Flynn Boyle's mutant bug in "Men in Black II," decides it would rather be a girl, taking on the shape — and I do mean shape — of one of those severe, dominating dames from a Helmut Newton photo. Not only does she come equipped with a new generation of that liquid-metal skin covering, she has a built-in plasma-gun; she's the definition of armed.
Warner Bros. Pictures
She also has a target beyond Connor: California veterinary student Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), who turns out to have a briefly shared past with John. Kate is saved from immolation by what we initially mistake for the teenage John Connor's savior from the last film, the reprogrammed-by-revolutionaries T-101 (they really should hand out a manual at the box office).
Arnold Schwarzenegger further develops the pragmatic, logical mindset of The Terminator in the series' latest installment.
It is in fact a creaky look-alike predecessor, a T-100 (Schwarzenegger), which is all the warriors of the future could spare. So it has no memory of its history with John and little chance of surviving direct confrontation with the slinky T-X. That requires John and Kate to put together their unprogrammed heads to find a way to defeat the T-X and survive long enough to make a little history of their own.
Unlike the R rating awarded "The Matrix Reloaded," the one for "T3" is wholly deserved. That's not so much for the violence and brief nudity of Loken and an impressively restored Schwarzenegger, but for the foreboding darkness of the film's final half. And it only gets darker as the minutes tick away to a new Judgment Day deadline — emphasis on "dead." Though "T3" is hardly short on in-jokes and gags, Mostow has balanced the braggadocio with the bleak in better proportions than he balances action with character.
It's churlish to complain that a film like "T3" has too much of the former, but the extended car chase and a couple of fireballs too many mean that Danes makes too abrupt a transformation from screamer to schemer and that Stahl never gets much past the James Dean brood that young actors often mistake for emotional depth. Schwarzenegger is ultimately allowed to develop — or mimic — a little humanity, but it all seems a little, well, mechanical.
"T3," nevertheless, proves a worthy continuation to two of the best sci-fi action films of the past 20 years, and those who worried that the loss of Cameron spelled doom shouldn't have. Mostow, director of the tension-filled "Breakdown" and the heavy-metal sub thriller "U-571" moves the machinery forward just fine. I find myself hoping that "T3" isn't just the latest of the summer's one-weekend wonders, because I'm actually eager to see where he and this cast, all signed up for a possible "T4," can take this saga from here.
Rated R for profanity, graphic violence, nudity.
