Terminator 2: Judgment Day Review

The liquid metal is the headline and the structure is the achievement. Cameron takes the first film's monster, casts the same actor and reassigns him as a protector, which turns every earlier association into leverage. The T-1000 was the first convincing use of digital morphing on a lead character, but it works because Robert Patrick plays it as a physical performance, running with an unhurried dead-eyed economy that no software could fake. Linda Hamilton rebuilds Sarah Connor from scratch into somebody genuinely unnerving, a woman whose correctness about the future has hollowed her out, and the asylum sequence and the Dyson confrontation are the real subject.

Cameron shoots the canal chase and the steel mill finale with an old-school clarity most modern action has abandoned, using real trucks, real helicopters and enough wide masters to keep the space intelligible. The dialogue is where the film shows its age, since the one-liners and the thumbs-up finish push the sentiment further than the material needs. Adam Greenberg's cold blue nights hold it all together.