Hot Picks
|
|
|
The Terminator
USA 1984
produced by Gale Anne Hurd, John Daly (executive), Derek Gibson (executive) for Hemdale, Pacific Western, Cinema '84/Orion
directed by James Cameron
starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen, Rick Rossovich, Bess Motta, Earl Boen, Dick Miller, Shawn Schepps, Bruce M. Kerner, Franco Columbu, Bill Paxton, Brad Rearden, Brian Thompson, William Wisher, Ken Fritz, Tom Oberhaus, Ed Dogans, Joe Farago, Hettie Lynne Hurtes, Tony Mirelez, Philip Gordon, Anthony Trujillo, Stan Yale, Al Kahn, Leslie Morris, Hugh Farrington, Harriet Medin, Loree Frazier, James Ralston, Norman Friedman, Barbara Powers, Wayne Stone, David Michels, John E. Bristol, Webster Williams, Patrick Pinney, Bill W. Richmond, Chino 'Fats' Williams, Greg Robbins, Marianne Muellerleile, John Durban
written by James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd, music by Brad Fiedel, makeup effects by Stan Winston
Terminator
review by Mike Haberfelner
|
|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
On TV, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) learns that two women sharing her
name have been killed that very night, and since she's got the feeling
she's followed by a stranger (Michael Biehn), she dives into a club and
phones to police - where two policemen (Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen)
are already on her case and have been trying to track her down. They
promise to send over pick-up - but before they can, a big man, the
Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), shows up at the club with the express
intention of killing her, and if he has to kill everyone else in the
process, no matter. But it's the stranger whom she tried to escape, one
Kyle Reese, who saves her. On their escape, he explains to her he's for
the future where humankind fights machine, with the humans winning the
upper hand thanks to her yet unconceived son John. So the machines have
sent a cyborg back in time to kill John's mother - Sarah - to alter the
timeline. And thus the humans have sent back Kyle to destroy the
Terminator before he can destroy humankind's only hope. But now they're on
the run from both the police and the Terminator - with the police getting
their hands on Kyle and Sarah first, only for the Terminator to destroy
the precinct, and Sarah and Kyle only narrowly escaping again. But no
matter how hard they're trying to run and hide, the Terminator seems
unstoppable, even by the biggest esplosions, so eventually they just have
to face the fight ... Now given, The Terminator is not
an intellectual masterpiece, its timetravel backstory is just a plot
device that poses more questions than it answers, and the main storyline
follows more that of a slasher movie, told less as a horror piece and more
as an action flick though. And that all said, damn is The Terminator
a good film, it's pretty much the perfect B picture, a film that doesn't
try to overwhelm its audience with special effects but uses what it's got
to maximum effect, that moves along its plot rather rapidly to keep the
audience on the edges of their seats, that pretty much presents the viewer
with action setpiece after action setpiece, all well-conceived, and that
even gets the most out of its unmistakably 1980s aesthetics. And James
Cameron, who truth to be told showed little promise in Piranha
2: Flying Killers only three years prior, proves himself to be at
the top of his game here. So if you're at all inclined to see perfectly
crafted action cinema, you just need to see this one. With this
film becoming a raging (and somewhat unexpected) success and cementing
Arnold Schwarzenegger's status as an action superstar even more so than Conan
the Barbarian, a string of sequels was inevitable, but even though
these films were elevated to mega-budget status, none of them matched the
narrative stringency and suspense-creating simplicity of the first film,
most of them suffering from overloading the basic plot with more and more
subplots pretty much standing in each other's way. And the idea to turn
Schwarzenegger into a good guy was at best questionable.
|
|
|