Terminator Salvation (WS)
Judgment Day has come and gone. Modern civilization has been destroyed.An army of Terminators roams the post-apocalyptic landscape, killing orcollecting humans where they hide. But small groups of survivors haveorganized into a Resistance, hiding in underground bunkers and strikingwhen they can against an enemy force that vastly outnumbers them.Onlyone man saw Judgment Day coming, a man whose destiny has always beenintertwined with the fate of human existence: John Connor . But something totally new has shaken Connor'sbelief that humanity has a chance of winning this war: the appearance ofMarcus Wright , a stranger fromthe past whose last memory is of being on death row before awakening inthis strange, new world. If humanity is to survive, Connor must decidewhether Marcus can be trusted, and the two must find common ground tomake a stand against the onslaught and meet the enemy head on.
Amazon.com Terminator Salvation restores some of the balance of huge freakin' explosions and emotionally compelling plot to the Terminator series. Set entirely after the nuclear assault that left the computer system Skynet in control of the world, Terminator Salvation follows John Connor (Christian Bale) as he grapples with both murderous robots and his superiors in the resistance, who aren't sure they believe the prophecies that Connor is destined to save humanity. Into the midst of this struggle tumbles Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington, who would later star in James Cameron's Avatar); the last thing he remembers was being executed in prison decades before. Baffled, he falls into company with Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, Star Trek) and a mute little girl, who soon get captured--but Wright then meets and bonds with Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood, Eight Below), a resistance fighter who remains loyal to the confused Wright even though Connor suspects he's not what he seems--or what he believes himself to be. Terminator Salvation isn't the astonishing synthesis of action and feeling that either The Terminator or T2 were; the plot threads are poorly woven and fray completely in the last third of the movie. Despite this, Terminator Salvation has at least two skillfully orchestrated action sequences that will get your heart racing, and Worthingtons beguiling mixture of toughness and vulnerability gives his relationship with Bloodgood a genuine pulse. It's imperfect, but compared with the hollow carcasses that most action movies (including Terminator 3) turn out to be, it's worth seeing. --Bret Fetzer
