Saturday May 30, 2009
McTerminator
Review by S.B.TOH
Loud, explosive and ever in a hurry, the latest Terminator movie under director McG is a lot of bang for the buck — literally, not figuratively. Unfortunately.
After the clunky mediocrity of the last Terminator movie, you’d think the franchise was in urgent need of an interesting director, and not someone who brings with him with the conviction of Powerpuff Girls; namely Charlie’s Angels’ McG.
Ugh.
The good news is: Salvation isn’t awful. Hey, when you’ve hit rock bottom, the only way left to go is up, no?
To be fair, McG’s Terminator it is a perfectly serviceable sequel (or is that prequel?) and comes with all the bells and whistles we have come to expect of the modern action movie — massive explosions, hails of hot lead, menacing gunships, terminators galore, and all of it seamlessly set against a fashionably if generically gritty palette.
Meanwhile, the sound mix is deafeningly loud, and the story is hurriedly paced, racing relentlessly to its conclusion much like the sleek robo-bikes that patrol the desolate highways of its post-apocalyptic world.
There is, in short, not a dull minute in the movie because, well, you can’t hear yourself think or find much of a breathing space in which to take stock of what’s going on, what with the great din and hurry of the movie.
Rumble, stumble, scramble, skirmish. Lock, load, boom and vroom. Go back to rumble. Repeat ad infinitum. Pump up the volume.
What the movie lacks is the human touch. One suspects the viewing experience mirrors the directing experience.
It feels as if McG chose the fast and furious style in hope that a stupendous display of heavy metal bedlam will shock and awe viewers into overlooking the teeny but important details.
Like properly fleshed out characters. Or a vivid sense of the hollowed out world they inhabit and the emotional dimension of the characters’ existence — their hopes and fears, desperation and tenacity.
Beyond the fighting and the dying which they do so ably and frequently, what is life like for these survivors who must persevere in a post-nuclear world in which the computers have taken over?
More interesting perhaps is the trials and tribulations of John Connor, the man who glimpsed this bleak future. What does it do to a person’s psyche to know that he is humanity’s only hope and practically its god?
Think about the circumstances of his being.
His father, when he fathered John Connor, was not of this world but from the future. As a consequence of this impossible union, the mother achieves what can only be described as a miraculous conception. Subsequently, the child was groomed by his obsessive mother to be humanity’s sole saviour in the looming apocalypse.
Holy schmoly.
It was always a wonky idea, this, and as warped and twisted as any time-travel tale could be, but a fascinating one nevertheless. It barely occurs to McG, however, who is often too busy devising mayhem for anything else.
When he does come around to the subject of Connor (a grizzled Christian Bale) and Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the scrawny younger man who is/will be his father, all McG does is to have Bale furrow his brows, look intense, and holler and argue with the leaders of the Resistance about the importance of putting off an all-out assault on Skynet until he can rescue Dear Dad — and therefore himself, and therefore all of humanity — from the dispassionate clutches of the evil machines.
McG, quite simply, has no sense of drama.
The man is all razzle and dazzle but has very little to offer in the way of story or character. His post-nuclear world does indeed feel post-nuclear; so thinly realised and hollow that there is very little sign of vitality despite the constant and loud, bullet-enforced protestations to the contrary.
Salvation’s pleasures are akin to fast food — instantaneous, eye-catching, fuss-free, deep-fried, and ultimately rather empty and forgettable, a triumph of efficiency and overkill over subtlety.
Bale, especially, is criminally under-utilised as John Connor, but the movie is not without its bright sparks. Moon Bloodgood, sassy and fetching as fighter pilot Blair Williams, is a breath of fresh air in the oxygenless landscape of the movie. Sam Worthington, a square-jawed, granite slab of stoicism, makes his presence felt as Markus Wright, a death row inmate from the 70s who is somehow resurrected from the dead.
There is mystery and a strange attraction about this chastened character in search of redemption.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, or rather the likeness of the Governator, makes a cameo in the finale as — woah — the smooth-skinned terminator assigned to crush John Connor and his father-to-be. It’s a nice touch of deja vu.
Beyond that, Terminator Salvation is all sound and fury — serious and shallow, a veritable conflagration of hot air.
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