The Terminator Review

Made for around six million dollars, this works because Cameron understood that a relentless killer is scarier when it cannot be reasoned with, bargained with or tired out. The structure is a slasher, one long night of pursuit through Los Angeles, but the engine is a loop, a soldier sent back to protect the mother of the man who sent him, which the script closes without ever pausing to congratulate itself. Schwarzenegger works precisely because he is not acting, he is moving like something built, and casting the hulking Austrian as the machine rather than the hero was the decision the whole film rests on.

Linda Hamilton's Sarah earns her transformation across a single night, and Brad Fiedel's clanging synthetic score does more than most orchestras. The seams show. The stop motion endoskeleton in the factory finale reads as a puppet now, the police station scenes are exposition delivered standing still, and Michael Biehn's Reese is written as a device rather than a person. Harlan Ellison's settled claim over the premise is a footnote the film has never shaken.