Most importanly the first Terminator established Arnold Schwarzenegger as the star of the decade, and sort of pinpointed the direction of his career as far as choice of roles are concerned. True, he had mostly been playing various dimensions of Terminator in other movies, but hey, with exception of some snobbish critics and detractors, who cares right?

Poor Arnold. The end of last decade has been pretty cruel to him. There were strings of flops, beginning with his 'comeback' End of Days, a good film marred by bad direction and editing. Sixth Day was not as big hit as it should have been and Collateral Damage was immediately forgotten. Ideas on the second sequel for the Terminator movie cropped up and Arnold was more than grateful to be on board.

So, now Cameron who is bent on making awards calibre movie is out of the picture. The task was given to Jonathan Mostov, whose directing credit include Breakdown and U571. Haven't seen the later, but loved the former. Starring Kurt Russell, the movie banked heavily on suspense, and Mostov did a perfect job.

I know. I've been going on and on on the background. Did I enjoy the movie? You betcha. It was fun seeing Arnold doing the role only he can do. He still looks incredible at the age of 50 something. Sure, there are bits of wrinkles around his eyes, and that is all. He still has the body and mean demeanour that made him such a popular star decades ago. Not to forget the silly sense of humour that will never make sense in other actor's mouth.

Yes, the movie can be very funny at times. All courtesy of Arnold of course. The duller moments are filled by Nick Stahl, Claire Danes and Kristianna Loken who plays Arnold's new nemesis TX. Stahl is fine as John Connor, but not someone you might want to care about. Danes did a good job, but plenty of screaming almost put her in the same league as Tanya Roberts (Bond fans know what I am talking about). Loken is dull. Dull. Dull. And dull. Probably I might differ in my comment if we had more glimpses of her cleavage, as she can provide nothing else. I must admit that hers is a tough role, since you can't do much in it. You don't show expressions. You allow stunt persons to do the rough stuff. What else can you do? It is not a well written role, after the awe-inspiring show stealing character Robert Patrick did more than a decade ago.

Now, did Mostov do justice to the franchise? Yup. And very well indeed. He had great respect to the material and with the exception of the music, non of the other departments sucked. There are two big set pieces, one involving a crane and the other with choppers. The first is smashing! Literally. You got to see it on big screen and feel the THX system batter you down with the awesome soundtrack to appreciate it. The latter shows you that Arnold is Arnold, after all. And the best news is, there is very little CG involved in those two stunt works. That's a real crane, chopper and people out there folks. And in the other scenes, the CG is put in to good use. Finally.

As I said earlier, the minus point is the music. The great pounding theme is missing until the final credit. Bah! And then, the familiar man vs machine theme keeps cropping up that you wanna shout, "Yeah, yeah, I know. Machines are evil. Get on with it!" The climax is not satisfying. In T2, you see Arnold descending down into hell heroically. Very tragic. You get lump in your throat. Here, you will go, "Huh! Is that all?"  And it is proceeded with a scene trying to explain why there is a second sequel and why there should be another one. We don't need that. Coz, we know that Arnold'll be back.