The Once and Future Things

"Yeah, so, I'm not sure how to put this."

A review of a movie like Terminator: Salvation consists of two things. One, did it make sense? Two, did it kick ass? As for point one, McG's new addition to James Cameron's Terminator oeuvre is an intriguing take on the story of Skynet's world domination. It's a prequel that takes place in the future. It's the stuff that led up to Arnold Schwarzenegger going back in time and knocking on doors in the L.A. area and asking, "Are you Sarah Connor?" in 1984's The Terminator. The first film was a low-budget endeavor that led to what became a landmark for cinematic special effects, 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day. A game Schwarzenegger even showed up for round 3 in 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which shows the events that lead up to the Judgment Day referenced in the previous movie's title. McG's Terminator: Salvation shoehorns perfectly into the Terminator saga and opens doors for further adventure.

"Salvation" is a washed out vision of the future. The North American landscape is more akin to the Middle East than it is amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesty. It's a post-apocalyptic terrain that shares the Mad Max films' penchant for barren desolation. The ruins of glass and steel bake in the sun, and the resistance led by John Connor and a network of generals carry out hit and run raids from the safety of subterranean (and even submersible) hideouts, biding their time for the one crippling blow they will inflict on Skynet.

John Connor is played by the increasingly ubiquitous Christian Bale as a stoic and humorless man on a mission. The son of Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor from the first two films, he shoulders the burden of his future and past. A fault in the film is that it doesn't allow Bale much humanity, and the irony is that newcomer Sam Worthington, who plays an early model T-800 Terminator, elicits more pathos than his human cohorts. Worthington steals the show as a machine with a heart (literally). His role is an action movie goldmine.

Now, does Salvation kick the proverbial ass? In that sense, it shows viewers that are fans of modern-day sci-fi things that are both familiar and new, but much like most films that aim for the whiz bang, the development of the characters is given short shrift. Terminator: Salvation rides on the wave of Terminator film nostalgia and the franchises' caché. It treads carefully so as to not sully the legacy of its forbearers. The main criticism is that it does not dare much that is new and fresh. For all its grittiness it is surprisingly tame. When the climactic Skynet raid takes place, viewers are treated to a surprise worth the price of admission, but overall, the ass kicking feels more like a mechanized love tap.

Bloom then Bust

Subtle Imagery

Director and screenwriter Rian Johnson's Brick was an exercise in style. The pseudo hardboiled murder mystery set in and around a high school where the students spoke like characters in a Dashiell Hammett novel was a novelty, but the UPN television series Veronica Mars executed the same conceit better because the show's creators were far more subtle about their homage to West Coast pulp. Also, for all its barely post-pubescent hard-nosed characters and adult themes, Mars had a heart. Johnson's Brick definitely had a pulse, but it had about as much heart as the Tin Man.

Johnson's The Brothers Bloom is an homage to old Hollywood glamour, and this time the substance almost measures up to the style. With large portions of the film shot in Prague (the European Vancouver), Romania and Montenegro, the film looks amazing. Sunlit esplanades, verdant hillsides, bustling ports and centuries-old architecture combine with a touching exposition to give the plot a storybook feel. Bloom also sports a nifty cast of Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as the titular brothers, Rachel Weisz as a lonely New Jersey heiress, Robbie Coltrane as an eccentric scene stealer, and Rinko Kikuchi, as a demolitions expert, of course.

The brothers are con artists and Weisz' Penelope Stamp is the mark in the infamous duo's final con. As is often the case in these sorts of movies, Bloom (Brody) has lost his taste for the game. His brother Stephen, the mastermind behind all their grifts who maps each con out in an organized flow chart with an accompanying notebook full of storyboard style setpieces, agrees to let his partner out once the job is done, but we know how these "final scores" usually go.

There are some interesting ideas at work here. The notions of life as a parlor game and destiny as a script are the undercurrent beneath the jaunty steamer that carries the story along on sparkling waves. Unfortunately, when that undercurrent takes center stage in the movies' final act, the simple message of the price of an unscripted life feels, well, off. To put it another way, it's like renting a Caterpillar backhoe to start an herb garden. It's the worst kind of bait and switch. However, I can't say Johnson didn't warn us in the exposition that this kind of finale was imminent, but a con movie without a satisfying ending is like a Jane Austen novel that doesn't end in a wedding.

The movie's first hour and a half is some of the most fun you can have at the movies. It's littered with scenes that are the stuff that great escapist cinema is made of, but just like the price the title characters pay for all that fun, we pay the price too.