Terminator Salvation Review

The best thing here is a single unbroken shot. Connor's helicopter is swatted out of the sky, crashes, rolls, and the camera stays with him as he crawls out and starts shooting, all in one move that Shane Hurlbut and McG stage without a visible cheat. Nothing else has that confidence. The script strands John Connor in a bunker arguing with command over a radio for most of the runtime, leaving Christian Bale nothing to play but a clenched jaw and a ruined voice, and the character ends up a supporting figure in his own prophecy.

Sam Worthington's Marcus Wright is the actual protagonist and the actual discovery, a man learning what he is built from, but the film keeps interrupting him to service Kyle Reese, Skynet trivia and a digital Schwarzenegger with the face of a wax figure. The wasteland is the usual grey quarry with orange fires in it, and Danny Elfman's score strains to make the thing feel large. Worst is the ending, a heart transplant so literal and so cheap that it cancels the one relationship the film had bothered to build. A PG-13 rating on a machine apocalypse does the rest of the damage.