In 2003, in the Longview State Correctional Facility, the criminal Marcus Wright is on death row, and is convinced by the cancerous Dr. Serena Kogan to donate his body to her research and he accepts. In 2018, after an unsuccessful attack to a Skynet facility, only John Connor survives, but he discovers that Skynet is developing the powerful new model T-800. Out of the blue, Marcus appears naked and with amnesia in the location. Marcus befriends the teenager Kyle Reese and the girl Star who help him to survive the lethal machines and they travel together in a Jeep. Meanwhile the resistance discovers a signal that might turn-off the machines and John offers to test it. When Kyle is captured by a machine and brought to the Skynet headquarters, Marcus decides to help the youngster and heads to Skynet; on the way, he saves Blair Williams who suggests to him that he should meet John Connor first. But Marcus steps on a mine and is submitted to surgery, when a secret about his origins is disclosed. - synopsis from IMDB
Cast - full listing
Genres
action, science-fiction
Facts & Figures
Directed by McG.
Rated 6.6 on IMDB from 295747 votes.
Runtime: 115 min.
Review
A new face, a new Terminator movie. Not such a new face actually, with Christian Bale picking up where Arnold “I’ll be back” Schwarzenegger left off. Not such a new movie either, really. Packed with action, Terminator Salvation never really kicks into gear.
Why? Because there’s not that much material to cover, that’s why. There are actors, on stage (always good :P), there is a story, in scenes (that tends to be handy as well) and there are Terminators, straight from CGI.
And that’s pretty much it. There’ no enticement, no surprise, no insight, little pace variation and quite frankly, little that comes to mind worth telling you. This is an off-shelf action movie without pretention, but even that modest ambition seems too much as Terminator methodically plods through the scenes and plays out its predictable story.
There are more positive notes, though. The dark and gloomy setting of the machine-ruled world is convincing and drips through the whole movie. There’ no problem getting into the mood John Conner and his resistance comrades must be in. The effects are OK, though I noticed nothing really special. The odd good combat scene makes you feel this movie is moving at a pace, but I just didn’t get sucked in even so.
Having little expectations for Terminator Salvation, I was still disappointed. I love a good, simple action movie, but just being simple doesn’t make it good.
Seen: 30 May 2009
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