.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Like most movie watchers, when the trailers for the 2009 Summer Season started to hit big screens about 6 months ago, many of us were salivating at the comic book and fantasy titles that would be rolled out week after week between May and August. Star Trek. Wolverine. Harry Potter. Transformers.

It's a nerds wet dream, and I have no qualms about calling myself a nerd.

This week's chapter of filmdom bliss is Terminator Salvation the fourth feature film of the Terminator franchise. Terminator Salvation stars Christian Bale as John Connor (the 7th actor to play the role) the character last played by Nick Stahl in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

In this installment, we fast forward into the future. The year is 2018 and the world has already been destroyed by a nuclear war initiated by Skynet - the company responsible for the production of terminators.

Conner is part of the human resistance who blow-up, blast and fire away at the large transformer-ish monstrosities that programmed to wipe out mankind.

In a side story that will soon intersect with the resistance fighters, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is a prisoner on death row in 2003. He donates his body to Cyberdyne and wakes up in 2018 without a clue of the devastation the world has endured in the past fifteen years. Marcus happens to meet up with Kyle Reese (played by Anton Yelchin) who saves him from being cut in two by a machine gun wielding terminator.

Anyone who has memories of the James Cameron first Terminator knows that Kyle Reese will eventually come back in time and actually father John Conner. So when John Conner finds out that Reese has being held hostage at Skynet in San Francisco, well, let's just say that he has an invested interest in ensuring no harm comes to the young teenager.

In order to accomplish this impossible mission, Conner is going to need help and that soon comes when he meets the Marcus Wright character who just happens to be a terminator which still has human organs (brain, heart). Not being completely machine, Marus has human tendencies and emotions and struggles with his realization that he a virtual cyborg.
So, for those of you that are still following along. Conner meets Marcus who has met Kyle who is needed by Conner so that Conner can exist in the first place.

Whew.

Directed by McG (Charlie's Angels), Terminator Salvation is truly a summer blockbuster. It was without question the loudest and fastest paced film so far in the early release month and if you like the theatre seat to rumble and things going BOOM, then this is going to be right up your USB port.

The first half anyways. In fact, the first half was some of the best fun I have had in the movies in some time. As Marcus and Kyle run from various huge mechanical beasts, things blow up real good and the car chase scene from unmanned motorcycles equipped with machine guns was nothing less than breathtaking.

The second half lets down the first however. Right from the moment that Conner meets Marcus, the movie tries to add a bit too much story and the action sequences didn't seem as 'fresh'. Actually, scene after scene in the second half, I kept thinking how I have seen it all before.

The small girl Star that is in peril but never really says much reminded me of Newt in Aliens. So did the sonar that Conner uses with his machine gun. The mechanical arms that were slithering through the water after Conner crashes a helicopter reminded me of Alien 3. The movie also reminded me at times of Batman, The Great Escape and even the score at times was reminiscent of The Dark Knight.

If the second half could have held up the momentum of the first, then we are looking at a 4.5 star movie. It was that good. But all the mumbo jumbo and plot holes just brought the films energy back into check and any movie that has someone explain to another character the whole plot - in this case a computer generated Helena Bonham Carter - is too 1960's Bond villain-ish form moi.

If Terminator Salvation were a game of Snakes and Ladders, there were more ladders than snakes which get the film a mild recommendation. I even didn't mind that Arnold Schwarzenegger's head was digitally put on another actors body so that the Marcus character and the Terminator that brought us here in the first place could duke it out machino-a-machino.

McG might not have been the best director to try and re-energize the franchise, but he did show that he can film action sequences with the best of them. Too bad he strayed away from the strength of the film through the final 45 minutes.