Terminator Salvation Movie Review

Christian Bale, (who plays one of the series' main protagonists -John Connor) is the star of this "unnecessary" movie addition to the Terminator movie saga. Normally he would be a positive cast add on to any movie, even if he only made an appearance for the purpose of being "eye candy". Christian seems to be dragging in this movie and that feeling just happened to transfer itself unto me. I "dragged" myself through the first 30 minutes of the flick all the while hoping, "Oh, God, please let there be more than this!" My hopes were mostly fruitless and the only reprieve was the introduction of a strong, too short but effective love story mid way through the film. It is a romantic movie segway that flops in the end because the male portion of that love connection finally dies (a second time). That's right, a second time; watch the movie to figure out 'that' plot twist.

Co-star, Sam Worthington provides a 'Non Oscar Winning Performance' for the character Marcus Wright but from the start I felt that I wanted to see more of him later in the film and this is in despite of the writer's attempt to make him seem like a hardened and unredeemable killer. He holds his own against Christian, who deserves a little accolade for trying to push his talents for the film, although the script fell short of any real plot. In the end, all I could see was him falling short of the actor's mark. He left me longing for his younger years of "American Physco", a role that suited him well when it came to playing it super reserved (except for the moments of sometimes excessive blood letting). I tried to ignore the fact that the producers wanted me to "just go ahead" and love and root for the character of John Connor because of his inclusion in the earlier movies. Against what they must have believed, the name-dropping did not garner any "instant affection" from me. Nothing they pulled out of their "Hollywood Bag of Tricks" could make up for the fact that neither his character or the character of young Kyle Reese scored anything higher than a big fat 'zero' on the depth scale. Their laziness left me thinking that I could have cared less if either of these actors bit the big hairy wet one. However, I did feel 'hatred', as always, for the Terminators. Damn those "evil hearted" machines of the future!

Still! In the tangled web of Terminators and time travel, I am left asking: Is this movie set pre or post Sara Connor shacking up with Michael Biehn?