Terminator: Dark Fate
4 stars
Director: Tim Miller
Stars: Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mackenzie David, Natalia Reyes
Duration: 128 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd
Eons ago (in 1991), I reluctantly accompanied a friend to watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I was not really an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, and had never watched the original Terminator seven years earlier – stories about cyborg assassins from the future didn’t quite tickle my fancy.
However, to my total surprise I enjoyed T2 immensely – especially the remarkable human story underlining the conflict between two killer robots (Schwarzenegger again, and Robert Patrick), one tough chick in Sarah Connor (played by Linda Hamilton), and her teen son John, the deadly Terminator’s prey.
I immediately watched the original Terminator – also excellent – and as the years rolled by, more Terminators came to the big screen. However, Terminators 3, 4 and 5 never quite reached the storytelling and entertainment value heights of their predecessors. The less said about T5 – Terminator: Genisys, the better; it stomped on what had gone before, leaving a mangled mess (including the mangling of the English language with that title.) In the meantime, pre-Cersei Lannister, Lena Headey played Sarah Connor in the not-half bad, too early terminated spin-off television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in 2009. I was a little consternated to learn that a sixth outing was in the works, seeing I felt there was little life left in the story.
That creator James Cameron was on board in his capacity of story writer and producer did spark the interest slightly, but I was bowled over by the news that Linda Hamilton would also be returning.
And there Hamilton is in the opening scene, a flashback from T2 – plus the first beats of its iconic score by Brad Fiedel – bringing Sarah back into the story, 20 years later. We are then introduced to Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes), a young autoworker whose life changes forever with the arrival of the Rev-9, a new Terminator machine (Gabriel Luna) who turns up determined to kill her.
Davis’s Grace is indeed grace under fire and elegantly and efficiently gives as good as she gets. But the show belongs to Hamilton
What stands between Dani and this highly sophisticated killing machine is Grace (Mackenzie Davis), a super-soldier who has also come from the future to protect her. Having survived the Rev-9’s initial onslaught the two women go on the run… only to be joined by Sarah, who, we learn, is still fighting to save the earth from the future. She has been following instructions from a mysterious source, who the three women are determined to seek out.
So, what has the reunion of Schwarzenegger, Hamilton and Cameron brought to the mix? Firstly it sends a clear signal that Cameron was not quite fond of what went on post-T2. Dark Fate is very much a direct sequel to T2 and ignores all that went on in the interim. Secondly, from the opening deadly white-knuckle car chase, right down to the climactic showdown set in a dam, it is clear that the filmmakers, led by director Tim Miller, have easily succeeded in recapturing the one-two combination of genuine heart and heart-stopping action so sorely missing from the various sequels. No expense is spared in the creation of the tremendous special effects – although the newly enhanced Rev-9 with its jaw-dropping ability to split into two separate entities overshadows Luna, who in his human form does not have half the menace of the earlier Schwarzenegger and Patrick machines.
The story treads a familiar path in its tale of dreaded-machine-hunting-down innocents and pays loving homages to its source. It cannot avoid the conundrums caused by time travel shenanigans – the genre itself makes it impossible – but the story by Cameron and his (many) co-writers give it a plausible contemporary twist; my only major quibble is the plot thread that links the end of T2 to this, which left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
As for the characters. Schwarzenegger makes a welcome return and is his usual, droll, deadpan self. The plot has his T-800 cyborg living a quiet sedentary life before events reunite him with Sarah and drag him into the action. Yet the actor graciously plays second fiddle to the trio of women driving the plot.
Reyes proves to be quite the feisty fighter. Davis’s Grace is indeed grace under fire and elegantly and efficiently gives as good as she gets. But the show belongs to Hamilton. Aged 60+, this is a woman who remains reliably resilient and wise, if a tad wisened. Combining rage, nonchalance and gravitas – and wielding weapons twice her size with consummate ease – Sarah Connor/Linda Hamilton resets the bar for female action heroes the same way she did in 1984, and boy are we glad that she is back!
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