What would I want in the perfect action film?

Let’s see.  There has to be first and foremost a seriously bad-ass villain who seems to hold all the cards.  Bigger, stronger, heavily armed, inimically cunning, and totally remorseless.

Then toss into the mix the unlikely hero who against all odds must somehow find a way to defeat the afore mentioned baddie.  My ideal hero is a scrapper.  A street-smart yet vulnerable guy who knows that his task is impossible but will try like hell to get ‘er done anyway—even if it costs him his life.

As I am a biped (actually a ‘triped’) I would also ask that an attractive heroine be thrown in…but not just any eye-candy floozy.  She looks good in jeans but can also fire a weapon, toss a grenade, laugh, cry, and ultimately serve as the hero’s well-spring from whom he draws one last ounce of inner strength when his own will falters.  And she must have room to grow as the true protagonist of the story. (more…)

A Terminator mega-robot is fun to watch only if he (it?) is making his (its?) marauding way toward its target; generally, that’s the good guy in the movie who, by superhuman strength and unprecedented cleverness, will dispatch said Terminator in the last reel. Every Terminator movie has been defined by this simple conflict: man versus super-machine.

Not this time. And that is why, despite spectacular visual effects, a brooding and hyper-popular Christian Bale in the lead role, and marketing that pretty much stamped the title across my kids’ foreheads, Terminator Salvation is not nearly the success that the other three movies were.

John Connor and his mom (and his friends and pretty much everybody else with whom they ever come in contact) become instant targets for future-born Terminator robots. The setup is pretty straightforward. The time is present day. (more…)

As we enter the fourth week of this summer season, I don’t know about you, but after a pleasant surprise with the unpretentious, proud to be a B-revenger “Wolverine,” each new release has gotten progressively worse. Let’s just hope – because there’s a lot of summer ahead of us – that we’ve bottomed out with “Terminator Salvation.”

What a crushing and noisy disappointment this is. For whatever reason, Director McG’s fourth chapter in the “Terminator” franchise tosses aside the simple but successful plot template that made its predecessors so memorable and goes all “Bourne” with a hyper-complicated plot, narcissistic “hero” and a big fat wide blur between the concept of good battling evil. Yes, welcome to Hollywood’s post-Bush “Terminator,” where a militaristic Resistance demands we “Stay the course,” Terminators work through their feelings, and John Connor runs off to find himself only to end up in a numbingly dull third act that plays like a direct-to-DVD toss off.

Things open on an intriguing and hopeful note. The year is 2003 and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is a guilt-ridden death row inmate not far from execution. Dr. Serena Krogen (Helena Bonham Carter, who’s always interesting), approaches Wright for what we assume is the umpteenth time to convince him to donate his body to science. His coming to terms with his own death mixed with her losing battle with cancer sparks his humanity and he relents. The State gives him what he deserves and we cut to 2018.

The world as we knew it is now ravaged by a war the machines wage against mankind. Cities are reduced to rubble and those who survive are reduced to prey, living underground or constantly on the run. Some have organized into what’s called the Resistance and their spiritual leader is John Connor (Christian Bale). (more…)