Terminator Salvation

Rating:

* * *

Verdict:

T4 a less than satisfying reboot of the cyborg franchise.

The first

Terminator

was the last of the great pre-digital age sci-fi action thrillers. The second was among the first of the digitals. The third was Arnold Schwarzenegger's last movie ("I am an obsolete model" his T-800 declared, the red light fading from his eyes) but not particularly memorable for anything else - other than the world blowing up on Judgement Day with future-saviour-of-mankind John Connor having made it to a bomb shelter.

Now the fourth takes us into that post-apocalyptic future of 2018, as the artificial intelligence grid Skynet tries to wipe out the remnants of mankind it didn't get in its first strike. But it's years before the network upgraded to beaming those killer cyborgs back to annoy the Connor clan.

It's a time-loop continuum you don't want to spend too much time contemplating because even if playing with the past doesn't affect the present, it sure can skew the logic of a 25-year-old franchise.

And while fourth is the first movie with no time travel and no (real) Arnie, it's also the first that exists in a CGI effects environment where anything is possible.

You want a giant Transformers-sized robot which has motor-Terminators launched from its shins? You got it.

You want a giant flying prison ship carting off captured humans to a laboratory/concentration camp for some sort of fiendish experiment? Sure thing.

You want Helena Bonham Carter's bride-of-Frankenstein visage as the face of Skynet? Check. Director McG, here out to establish his credibility after a past of music videos and Charlie's Angels films, gets to do all that.

But you want fun with that? Or a movie which feels like a new beginning to a second trilogy but holds to the orginal spirit - a combo of technophobia, paranoia, dark humour, and female survivor instinct?

Yeah well, you can't have everything...

But having too much of everything else is Salvation's problem. It's got not one, but two hero storylines with Connor and Marcus - Sam Worthington as a guy who has woken up from a death sentence to find he's in a different kind of hell - on a collision course.

Add to that the appearance of young Kyle Reese (Yelchin), who, eventually, must go back in time to protect Sarah Connor from Arnie and father John.

It's also got more Terminators than it knows what to do with, rather than just the single unrelenting robo-assassins of the past movies. And it's got almost all of California with a quick diverson into the Pacific as its battleground, some of which it manages to look like a Vietnam war movie.

Among the clutter there are nifty parallels to past instalments - the beefy Marcus and the cunning Reese escaping from a Stalingrad-like Los Angeles has echoes of Arnie and a young Connor in T2. That movie's truck and motorcyle jump stunt is reprised - so too is the one from, of all things, The Great Escape - as are a few of the series' touchstone lines.

When Connor says "I'll be back" to his pregnant wife in Bale/Batman's furball rasp, it might be meant to leaven the grimness but it has the opposite effect.

Bale certainly cuts an intense figure as Connor, but he's too much the surly man of action, one that seems at odds with the character's upbringing - the kid who was groomed to out-think Skynet, not just outshoot it. So much for the geek inheriting the scorched Earth.

Opposite Bale, though his character is undermined with convolutions like a laughable brief romantic interest, Aussie newcomer Worthington fares better as Marcus, a man out of time. But his particular identity crisis is all too apparent, too early.

And apart from an impressive helicopter crash sequence - which tempts the heckle: "Christian! Bail" - the film's action factor isn't particularly exciting or inventive.

Yes, it's dark and gritty and hardware-heavy and does enough to make you wonder "what happens next?" as you leave - though that's also due to an ending far less satisfying than any of its predecessors, including the poor T3. But Salvation takes its job as seriously as its name, when it really should be far more entertaining. Look, we get it - the machines have taken over. But hey, it's not like it's the end of the world.

Russell Baillie

Cast:

Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood

Director:

McG

Rating:

M (violence)

Running time:

114 mins

Pictured above: Christian Bale's John Connor is too much action-man, too little techno-geek. Photo / Supplied