Terminator Salvation (Blu-ray) (2009)

"...breathless and nerve-jangling.  Bob Mondello, NPR
"This is the film Terminator fans have been desperate to see. There's a damn good film here.  Mickey McMonagle, Sunday Mail
"...entertaining movie experience.  Patrick Parker, Premiere Magazine
"McG pulls out all the stops.  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone Magazine

Editor's Note The fourth installment of the TERMINATOR series follows an adult John Connor (played by Christian Bale) as he attempts to organize a human resistance force which could prove to be mankind's last true hope in the war against the machines. Opening in the year 2018, TERMINATOR SALVATION finds John Connor's certainty about the future shaken by the sudden appearance of a mysterious stranger named Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), whose last memory is of sitting on death row and awaiting execution. Unable to determine whether Marcus was sent from the future or rescued from the past, Conno begins to wonder whether there is still any hope left for the human race as the robots grow more powerful and aggressive than ever before. It appears that Skynet is preparing a devastating final attack designed to eliminate the human resistance once and for all, leaving Connor and Marcus with no choice but to strike back at the cybernetic heart of Skynet's operations. Once there, the two battle-scarred soldiers discover a devastating secret regarding the potential annihilation of all humankind. Anton Yelchin fills Michael Biehn's shoes as a young Kyle Reese in the first installment of a planned TERMINATOR trilogy from director McG (CHARLIE'S ANGELS).

	Bryce Dallas Howard
	Moon Bloodgood
	Sam Worthington
	Jadagrace
	Christian Bale
	Anton Yelchin
	Common
	Jane Alexander
	Helena Bonham-Carter
	Shane Hurlbut - Director of Photography
	Danny Elfman - Composer
	Charles Gibson - Visual Effects Supervisor
	Conrad Buff - Editor
	Michael Ferris - Screenwriter
	John Brancato - Screenwriter
	Jeffrey Silver - Producer
	Andrew G. Vajna - Executive Producer
	Joel B. Michaels - Executive Producer
	Dan Lin - Executive Producer
	Victor Kubicek - Producer
	Derek Anderson - Producer
	Moritz Borman - Producer
	Mario Kassar - Executive Producer
	Jeanne Allgood - Executive Producer
	Joseph McGinty - Director

Los Angeles Times
"In McG's new world order, the machines now rule with enforcers of every shape imaginable roaming the the land....[T]here are enough pyrotechnics and heavy artillery to feel like Armageddon squared.... 05/20/2009

A.V. Club
"The first two-thirds of the film features an array of impressive setpieces that bring the trademark TERMINATOR action sensibility -- quivering flesh and fragile machingery versus the pitiless approach of unfeeling circuits -- into a dusty, post-nuclear hellscape on loand from THE ROAD WARRIOR." 05/20/2009

New York Times
"[The movie] has a brute integrity lacking in some of the other seasonal franchise movies....[The action is] loud and blunt, a symphony of screaming gears, anguished torque and thumping collisions of metal and flesh." 05/21/2009

Washington Post
"The world McG presents to us is scorched and hostile, and the action is startling and visceral. Significantly, TERMINATOR SALVATION takes itself far more seriously than its predecessors." 05/20/2009

Wall Street Journal
"Mr. Worthington's specialty is taking command of the camera. It's fascinating to watch him dominate scene after scene with his coiled energy, compelling voice and quick intelligence." 05/22/2009

Entertainment Weekly
"Bale brings the role his usual stylish, seething edge..." 05/29/2009

ReelViews 8 of 10
Terminator: Salvation does not seem like a Terminator movie, at least when compared to what we have experienced from filmmakers James Cameron (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines). This fourth Terminator is a different breed with a divergent feel, almost as if director McG (n?e Joseph McGinty Nichol) had decided to fuse Cormac McCarthy's The Road with Transformers. Gone (at least mostly) are the time travel paradoxes and the concept of a single, indestructible villain. In their place is a futuristic war movie. With its idea of an insurgency striking against an implacable evil empire, there's more than a little Star Wars in Terminator: Savlation, although not even at its Empire Strikes Back bleakest was Lucas' series this dark...By radically destaturating color, sometimes to the point where scenes are almost black-and-white, McG develops a strong post-apocalyptic aesthetic. It's a lot like the (recent) TV series Battlestar Galactica, where everything was dark and grimy, and bright colors rarely made appearances. One could argue that McG overdoes it a little, but he's clearly not averse to traveling down potentially unappealing roads. The faux note of hope injected at the film's end does little to dispel the fact that, if the humans win the war, the price is going to be astronomical...Perhaps the ultimate problem with making more Terminator movies is that the entire story was told by Cameron in the first two movies and the subsequent sequels, including this one, have been struggling to explore corners where the time travel contrivance allows for flexibility and interpretation. Terminator: Salvation, like its immediate predecessor, is enjoyable and contains some top-notch action sequences, but it seems extraneous. This is everything a good summer movie should be and, while it does not dishonor the Cameron chapters of the saga, neither does it prove to be an indispensable adjunct to them. - James Berardinelli

Variety 8 of 10
Darker, grimmer and more stylistically single-minded than its two relatively giddy predecessors, Terminator Salvation boasts the kind of singular vision that distinguished the James Cameron original, the full-throttle kinetics of Speed and an old-fashioned regard for human (and humanoid) heroics. Only pic's relentlessly doomsday tone -- accessorized by helmer McG's grimy, gun-metal palette -- might keep auds from flocking like lemmings to the apocalypse. The fourth in the celebrated sci-fi series, Salvation opens and closes with humanity at war with the machines. In other words, this thing isn't going to end soon. Nor should it, if it keeps on like this...Christian Bale, playing the "prophesized leader of the Resistance" John Connor, may have traded in the Batman body armor for Road Warrior-style outerwear, but one thing hasn't changed: He is, once again, a movie star playing second fiddle. Heath Ledger stole The Dark Knight away from him and Sam Worthington (who will appear in Cameron's Avatar this Christmas) heists Terminator Salvation from Bale, for the most ironical of reasons: In a movie that poses man against machine, Worthington's cyborg is the far more human character...McG's direction is always intelligent. (He does seem to have a thing for The Great Escape, which is referenced several times.) The script by John Brancato and Michael Ferris occasionally goes off the rails. Certainly, their insertion of an existential dilemma for Marcus -- "I need to find out who did this to me," he says, his chrome-plated plumbing having been exposed to the open air -- feels very late-inning...And the obligatory borrowing from the previous movies ("Come with me if you want to live," "I'll be back ...") tend to upset the mood created within McG's bleached-out world, which is very deliberate and doesn't need the comic relief...There are great bits though: The thrashing, centipede-like, killer-snake thingie, which has the personality of a wolverine, is a neat invention. So are the biker Terminators, which molt like malignant pinecones off their towering mother 'bot. A Schwarzenegger lookalike -- it isn't clear whether it's the ex-actor CGI'd or a complete fabrication -- is funny, but in this case apt - John Anderson

Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
One of Hollywood's oldest axioms teaches us: The story comes first. Watching Terminator Salvation, it occurred to me that in the new Hollywood, the storyboard comes first. After scrutinizing the film, I offer you my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights. That lasts for almost two hours...The action scenes, which is to say, 90 percent of the movie, involve Armageddon between men and machines 10 years in the future. The film's most cheerful element is that they've perfected artificial intelligence so quickly. Yes, Skynet is self-aware and determines to wipe out humankind for reasons it doesn't explain. A last-ditch resistance is being led by John Connor, or "J.C." for you Faulkner fans...The first Terminator movie I regret (I suppose) I did not see. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was a fairly terrific movie, set in the (then) future, to prevent the nuclear holocaust of 1997. You remember that. It was about something. In it, Edward Furlong was infinitely more human as John Connor than Christian Bale is in this film...Schwarzenegger, indeed, reappears in this fourth film, thanks to a body double and a special-effects face, which makes him, I think, a cyborg of a cyborg. His famous line "I'll be back" is uttered by one John Connor or another, and I hope it draws more chuckles than it did at the screening I attended. Why, those immortal words are chiseled into granite, or at least into the lobby floor at the AMC River East theaters...If there is one wholly sympathetic character, that would be Blair Williams, played by the fragrant Moon Bloodgood. She murmurs some tender words at the 45-minute mark, representing the most complex dialogue up to that point. Dr. Serena Kogan (Helena Bonham Carter) has a longer speech, but you can't be sure it's really her, and she may have been lying...Anyway, most of the running time is occupied by action sequences, chase sequences, motorcycle sequences, plow-truck sequences, helicopter sequences, fighter-plane sequences, towering android sequences and fistfights. It gives you all the pleasure of a video game without the bother of having to play it. - Roger Ebert