Terminator: Salvation

Wow.

Ka-boom.

This outing in the Terminator series is packed with over the top action, so much so that I thought for a moment I was watching an old Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer film. The special effects were intense and believable, the sound engineering was the best I’ve heard in a movie in a long time, and the action sequences themselves were beautifully choreographed to emphasize the desperation of the characters and the plight of humanity after global thermonuclear war.

I’m not a Terminator fanboy; in fact, I missed the third film, but I did catch the first season of the Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox. I always thought the movies reverted to the same plot: Robot goes back in time to kill John Connor. Someone/something else goes back to protect John Connor. They fight. Someone dies (in a metaphysical sense). Roll credits. 

This film attempts to be part thriller, part science fiction spectacle, and part drama. While the characterization is a tad on the weak side to make this truly believable (unlike the excellent attention to character in T2) as a drama, the other two elements are so successful that you’re not left wanting. 

Christian Bale is a little disappointing. He uses his Batman growl as a subsitute for real emotions in a couple of scenes, but he manages to redeem himself in tender moments with his pregnant wife (played by the radiant Bryce Dallas Howard). The other actors are a bit superfluous–not enough screen time was spent really developing any of them other than Sam Worthington’s character Marcus Wright. It was, however, a delight to see Michael Ironsides returning to a grumpy commander role.

This doesn’t matter. What matters is the machine body count, the number of explosions, and the speed at which you shove popcorn in your mouth. This is action cinema at its pinnacle with high quality effects, a decent story, satisfying conclusion.