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| Arnold Schwarzenegger |
THE TERMINATOR (1984). Director: James Cameron.
In the year 2029 Los Angeles and the world are in the midst of war started by rogue robots who want to destroy mankind. When a cyborg killing machine known as a "terminator" (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent back in time to murder the mother of the leader of the resistance -- John Connor -- he is followed by Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn of
Deadly Intentions), whose mission is to save her life at any cost. At first Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is resistant to Reese's approaches, but after the Terminator wipes out a police station she realizes that his fantastic story is utterly true ...
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| Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton |
I confess I was never all that carried away with this picture at the time of its release, and my opinion hasn't changed all these years later.
The Terminator uses a number of sci fi and comic book tropes to tell its story, which is mildly interesting, and the characters are hardly that dimensional. (Harlan Ellison felt the opening moments of the film were too close to one of his stories and received a settlement and a credit on the DVD.) Although the movie moves at a very fast pace, it seems better edited than directed. The performances are good -- Schwarzenegger only needs to look determined and grim and he does that okay -- and the film has an undeniably exciting climax in a factory when the robotic infrastructure of the Terminator is revealed. The obligatory sex scene is tiresome, but necessary in some ways for the plot.
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| The Terminator sheds its Schwarzenegger skin |
Although these questions may have been answered in the sequels -- to date there have been five -- one has to wonder why the unmarried Sarah doesn't ask Reese why her son in the future has the same last name that she does. And why does the cyborg have an Austrian accent? Bill Paxton has a very small role as a thug but in a few years he would be co-starring with both Schwarzenegger and Biehn [
Aliens] in different productions (both directed by James Cameron). Dick Miller [
A Bucket of Blood] has a cameo as a gun shop owner who gets on the wrong end of Schwarzenegger's shotgun. Brad Fidel's score is generally pretty cheesy, but the FX work by Stan Winston and others is fine.
Verdict: Odd that this mediocre and highly over-rated little film started such a successful franchise. **1/2.
