Last night we watched The Terminator for the first time in a decade and half...and it's astonishingly good.
Plot, pacing, duologue, the whole bit. Don't tell us James Cameron doesn't know how to make a movie.
The man pays attention to detail. Sarah Connor sits at a table in a club amongst beer bottles and cigarette butts. The clocks are right. <>We recall a line in T-2 about the Terminator being wanted for killing 17 cops, and by our count, he killed 17 cops in the police station.
The Terminator takes place in an LA gritty like NYC. No glitz and glamour here, just Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese fighting for their lives.
Across three acts Sarah Connor is changed utterly. In the first she's a contented young woman, university student and waitress, who lets face it, is just waiting for the right guy to come along. In the second act her world is shattered. In the third Sarah Connor becomes the bad-ass she made famous in T-2. 'Move it soldier!' she shouted at Reese, and of course, 'You're terminated fucker.' In the last scene she's driving around Mexico with a German Sheppard and a .357.*
Paul Winfield and Lance Hendrickson play coffee drinking, cigarette smoking, pill popping police detectives, tropey as hell but well done. We love it when they grab M-16s.
Younger reader(s) this is an 80's film. If you want to know what 1984 looked and felt like, watch The Terminator.
*Hey, anyone see the final scene they cut from T-2? It made us air-sick.
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