TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY

   Film (1991). Lightstorm/Carolco/Tri-Star. Prod/dir/written James CAMERON. Executive prods Mario Kassar, Gale Anne HURD. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton. Screenplay Cameron, William Wisher. 135 mins. Colour.

   A decade after The TERMINATOR (1984), two more Terminators (human-seeming killer ROBOTS) have been sent back to the present from the human-machine wars ofAD2029, one to eliminate John Connor, the future human leader (the initials are shared with Jesus Christ), while he is still a child (well played by Furlong), the other (Schwarzenegger) to protect him. Linda Hamilton again plays Sarah Connor, John's mother, but, where once she wascute, now she is a chain-smoking, violent obsessive in a psychiatric ward, body rippling with muscles, awaiting with a frozen snarl the nuclear HOLOCAUST-due to arrive in August 1997 - of which she has been forewarned.T2:JD is fundamentally an action thriller, choreographed with precision, probably the most expensive film ever made (budget estimated at $95 million), and very exciting indeed. It does, however, project images of pain and impotence in the shadow of a dark future: the imminence and immanence of nuclear disaster (powerfully rendered in a dream sequence), Sarah's wrecked psyche, the irony of a MACHINE becoming a father figure,the boy struggling inarticulately to explain the sanctity of life to a killer robot (even if a "good" one this time). There is a clear awareness in Cameron of the intractability of human anger and violence; it is precisely these qualities, we must suppose, on which the nihilistic machines, our killer children, are modelled. This awareness runs half-hidden beneath the cynicism of the son/daddy mawkishness aimed directly at the older, softer viewer, and the dishonesty of so violent a film hawking a dove message.As sf the film becomes embedded in its own causal loop, whereby a future technology sent into the past catalyses the creation of the very technology that caused the trouble in the first place. The second Terminator - played by the interestingly cast Patrick, a slightly built actor with a wholly affectless face-has the ability to flow from shape to shape like quicksilver. Though silly, this makes for great special effects. Commercial considerations demand an upbeat ending, which leaves us with the unlikelihood of a plot in which the most efficient killing machine ever created is shown as lacking the competence to kill.

   PN

   The film was awarded a HUGO in 1992.

   See also: ACE BOOKS; CINEMA.