July 2, 2003
MOVIE REVIEW Arnold and pals, acting machines • A robot movie with heart, 'Terminator 3' combines brisk action with
compelling drama. And what a supporting cast.
Humanity's hope: Claire Danes, Nick Stahl and Arnold Schwarzenegger battle a network of
evil robots in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."
By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
"I am an obsolete design," Arnold Schwarzenegger's
T-101 says with as much melancholy as a machine can muster, but hearing
the line spoken in "Terminator 3" makes you wonder if the
actor had himself in mind as much as his character.
For as a 55-year-old action hero whose most recent films
include such inert efforts as "End of Days," "The 6th
Day" and "Collateral Damage," Schwarzenegger might
well be considering whether he's being similarly frozen out by a film
industry that assumes his best fighting days are behind him.
But, like that resilient mechanism, Schwarzenegger still
has enough moxie in him for at least one last hurrah before possibly
heeding the siren song of public service. "Terminator 3: Rise
of the Machines" and its story of the 101's battle to stay competitive
with the newest model assassin, the sexy T-X (Kristanna Loken), fills
that bill quite nicely.
An expertly paced and efficient sci-fi thrill machine, "T3"
effectively marries impressive action sequences with persuasive storytelling
and its star's uniquely appealing style of "No" drama Ñ
as in no reaction, no expression, no emotion of any kind.
While "T3" would not have been made without Schwarzenegger's
participation, it would not have succeeded without the ability of
its lesser-known director, Jonathan Mostow. Though his name lacks
the marquee value of that of James Cameron, who ably directed both
predecessors, Mostow's skillful work in his own previous features,
"Breakdown" and "U-571," made him a shrewd choice
here.
In those films as well as this, Mostow shows a gift for doing
action right by not dumbing things down and by emphasizing the underlying
reality of even far-fetched situations. And, unlike directors who
come to action from music videos and commercials, he understands the
necessity of connecting mayhem to human storytelling.
In "T3," Mostow has in effect made a big little
movie, bringing the leanness and pacing of old-fashioned B pictures
to an elephantine, $175-million project that has five producers and
four executive producers. Unlike the original "Terminator"
or the first "Matrix," this film does not break any new
ground stylistically or thematically, but it also doesn't have a big
head and thus avoids falling victim to the pretension that hampered
the "Matrix" sequel.
Also, again paralleling B movies, Mostow and screenwriters
John Brancato and Michael Ferris (working from a story credited to
them and Tedi Sarafian) have given "T3" an unexpected level
of darkness. An intriguing sense of malaise and dread hangs over this
film, as though the creative team has thought through the implications
of the original "Terminator" narrative and realized they
are not necessarily happy ones.
If anyone in the audience doesn't know that story, "T3"
smartly recaps it in the film's opening voice-over, in which twentysomething
John Connor relates that mechanical killers from the future, terminators,
have twice tried to murder him because he is fated to grow into a
commander who will lead remnants of the human race to victory in a
war with a deadly machine complex called Skynet.
Instead of being ecstatic at the prospect of all this glory,
Connor, ever the reluctant champion, has opted to hide instead. Since
he knows that something awful Ñ the destruction of almost all humanity
in a nuclear attack called Judgment Day Ñ has to happen before he
can become a hero, he "feels the weight of the future bearing
down" on him.
One of the many shrewd moves "T3" has made is casting
Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei's lover in "In the Bedroom," as
Connor. Stahl is especially good at conveying the lost, haunted, fearful
side of this young man. Connor should feel safe after defeating the
machines in the previous film (when he was played by Edward Furlong),
but he doesn't, instead choosing to live off the grid, without address
or phone number, so the machines can't find him.
As Connor surmises, Judgment Day turns out not to have been
stopped but merely postponed, and the machines have sent T-X to kill
not only him but also his future lieutenants, who include Ñ though
neither he nor she is initially aware of it Ñ old childhood friend
Kate Brewster (Claire Danes).
Convincingly played (no small task) by Loken as the kind
of glacial blond who would have given Alfred Hitchcock fits, T-X comes
factory-equipped with quite a range of nifty powers. This forbidding
Terminatrix/dominatrix can change shape at will and telepathically
make other machines, including cars and trucks, do her bidding.
T-101, officially a replica of "T2's" cyborg, ought
to be worried, and in fact might be if machines could fret. But as
brought to artificial life by Schwarzenegger in the role he was born
to play, this old-style Terminator, reprogrammed by the resistance
to help Connor survive, is more stoic than the Stoics and, like those
old Timex watches, can take a licking and keep on ticking.
Though Schwarzenegger was a given, the rest of the ensemble
was not, and casting directors Randi Hiller and Sarah Halley Finn
have paid attention to even the smallest parts. The empathetic Danes
was a good choice for Kate, a thankless role that is especially hard
to make palatable because, apparently not having seen either of the
first two films, this woman spends half the movie in whiny hysteria
because she has no idea what is going on. "T3" manages to
find some time for humor, engaging in bits of business like T-101's
search for the perfect sunglasses. A film like this, however, lives
and dies by its action and its stunts, and Ñ as put together by Mostow,
stunt coordinator Simon Crane and cinematographer Don Burgess Ñ "T3"
has at least one classic.
That impressive sequence comes relatively early on, as T-X
commandeers an enormous 100-ton Champion crane and uses it and some
police cars to chase down the good guys, with the T-101 hanging on
and trying to gum up the works. Snappily edited by Neil Travis and
Nicolas de Toth, the chase features a bravura slamming of the crane
arm into a collapsing glass building that was shot by 14 cameras because
it wasn't going to happen again.
Impressive as all that is, "T3's" greatest accomplishment
may be the simple ability to make us worry about its characters, the
way it allows us to feel that the people being chased are in actual
danger. Not even $175 million ensures that that will happen. In fact,
it sometimes ensures just the opposite.
'Terminator 3'
MPAA rating: R, for strong sci-fi violence and action, language and brief
nudity.
Times guidelines: Much violence but not excessively bloody or gory.
Arnold Schwarzenegger ... Terminator Nick Stahl ... John Connor Claire Danes ... Kate Brewster Kristanna Loken ... T-X David Andrews ... Robert Brewster
Mario F. Kassar and Andrew G. Vajna present an Intermedia/IMP
production, in association with C2 Pictures and Mostow/Lieberman Productions.
Director Jonathan Mostow. Producers Mario F. Kassar, Andrew G. Vajna,
Joel B. Michaels, Hal Lieberman, Colin Wilson. Executive producers
Moritz Borman, Guy East, Nigel Sinclair, Gale Anne Hurd. Screenplay
John Brancato and Michael Ferris, based on a story by John Brancato,
Michael Ferris and Tedi Sarafian. Cinematographer Don Burgess. Editors
Neil Travis, Nicholas de Toth. Costumes April Ferry. Music Marco Beltrami.
Production design Jeff Mann. Art directors Mark Zuelzke, Beat Frutiger,
Andrew Menzies, Shepherd Frankel. Set decorator Jay R. Hart. Running
time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.
Terminator 3: Rise
of the Machines
BATTLE
BOTS Loken and Schwarzenegger put on the hurt
Close proximity with the 2 Green 2 Furious action stylings of ''The
Hulk'' benefits Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. But it turns out
comparison isn't needed to appreciate the durable charms of Old Ironsides
himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Suited up once again in the blocky
cyborg's iconic Village People leatherwear, after an absence of a
dozen years, a fearsomely well-moisturized Schwarzenegger stars as
a collector's-edition replica of the T-800 that was destroyed for
the good of mankind in 1991's ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day.''
In ''T3,'' the replicant -- now renumbered T-101 -- lands in Los
Angeles to fight off a state-of-the-art T-X killing machine (Kristanna
Loken, suitably, unsettlingly vacant), a comely model stalking the
city's vulnerable streets. And with him, we return to a franchise
we never knew we missed, surprisingly grateful for the star's generosity
-- and evident pleasure -- in strapping on the old sunglasses and
blasting adversaries to hell.
Tops on T-X's to-do list before machines can rule the earth in
the expressionless, wrinkle-free future is to kill a couple of humans
who stand in the way of world domination: John (Nick Stahl), the now-grown
son of the late freedom fighter Sarah Connor (so memorably sculpted
by Linda Hamilton), and Kate Brewster (Claire Danes), a do-gooding
veterinarian linked by misty fate to Connor.
Tops on T-101's agenda, meanwhile, is proving that a story born
out of the chrome-y clang of the 1980s -- a durable alloy of Schwarzenegger's
schnitzel appeal and director James Cameron's apocalyptic vision --
has a place in a very different action-hero world, in a sequel made
without Cameron and starring a middle-aged specimen of Austrian precision
engineering and American body-shop repair. (As it is with cyborgs
and movie stars, the aging takes place in the internal combustion
system, while the casing looks smooth as ever.)
That ''T3'' fulfills its assignment so ably is a triumph of brain
taking over where brawn can no longer prevail: What Schwarzenegger
lacks in speed and agility he, director Jonathan Mostow, and screenwriters
John Brancato and Michael Ferris make up for in bright, heavy metal
charm, unexpectedly lively and self-aware wit, and a sure sense of
when to stop fussing with special effects and just let Arnold's famous
''doan doo dot'' Teutonic-Conehead monotone work its low-tech magic.
Not to stomp the big guy when he's down, but ''T3'' casually displays
exactly what ''The Hulk'' misses -- which is to say a seriously happy
sense of scale, and an awareness of the world (both inside and outside
the movie theater) in which it holds a place. ''Ainguh is maw yoosful
dan despayuh,'' T-101 philosophizes. But Mostow -- a great choice
for the job, based on the big yet lithe work he did with ''U-571''
and, especially, ''Breakdown'' -- knows that yoomah is more useful
than CGI in selling both action figures and movie stars.
LEAD PERFORMANCE: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE: Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken DIRECTOR: Jonathan Mostow WRITER: Tedi Sarafian RELEASE DATE: Jul 2 2003 RATING: R GENRE: Action, Sci-Fi RUN TIME: 109 Minutes DISTRIBUTOR | BROADCAST: Warner Bros. RELATED: The Terminator (Franchise) SEQUEL: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) |
