Terminator: Salvation

It is 25 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger was sent back from the future to kill the woman destined to give birth to the saviour of the human race.

Since then bad cyborgs have changed sides, we’ve survived Judgment Day and Arnie has become Governor of California, but only in real life. Frankly, I’m a little confused.

Terminator: Salvation is the fourth film in the series. It is set in 2018 where John Connor (Christian Bale) is leading the fight against the machines.

He is about to meet his father for the first time, except his father Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) is still a teenager and has yet to meet his mother, which doesn’t seem biologically possible.

Just to complicate matters the film actually starts in the past, 2003 to be precise, when Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is facing execution by lethal injection and scientist Serena Kogan (Helena Bonham Carter) is hanging around like a latterday Frankenstein hoping to make use of his body parts. Quite where Marcus fits into the bigger picture will become apparent as we go along.

Terminator seems to be doing everything possible to scramble your brains but you quickly accept that there is no point fretting over the niceties of the plot as they are not that important. This is a film that is much more comfortable blowing things up than trying to tell a coherent story.

Director McG works on the principle: if in doubt just start a chase, destroy a building or unleash a torrent of action. Some of the special effects are mightily impressive but there is such an abundance of them that they act as a kind of anaesthetic, numbing any sense of appreciation.

Reduced to its essence, Salvation is just one more chapter in the war between the machines and humankind with Connor striving to inspire the pockets of human resistance that remain in the aftermath of the apocalypse unleashed at the end of Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines.

McG is skilled at giving the film a visual identity of its own. The colour palette is all muddy browns and slate grays. The mood feels heavy and Teutonic.

Later in the film you wonder why the machines are rounding up humans and transporting them to mass prisons when surely all they want to do is kill them? On the other hand that does create scenes reminiscent of a Holocaust film and the whole ethos of Salvation is a Second World War movie with the daredevil Connor leading the resistance and uncertain whom he can trust.

Christian Bale is an earnest, stalwart presence as Connor although he seems to be suffering from laryngitis or is that just the result of too much shouting on film sets?

Unfortunately for Bale he faces strong competition in the charisma stakes from Sam Worthington as Marcus who turns up in 2018 to play his part in the story. Worthington has been on the brink of stardom for a handful of years and he does get to play the best character in the film but when he’s on screen you are never likely to be looking at anyone else.

Moon Bloodgood makes a strong impression as combat pilot Blair but poor Bryce Dallas Howard has very little to do as Connor’s wife Kate.

Naturally, Salvation paves the way for yet another instalment in the Terminator tale.

If you can just savour the spectacle and not worry about the tangled plot then it is a more than acceptable summer blockbuster.

VERDICT 3/5

(Cert 12A; 115 mins)