"I'LL BE BACK. WITH GREAT TITS." - a review by Stew.

Well, there we go - Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines. And rise they do. Don't think I'm ruining it for anyone there; the title pretty much gives that little plot crease away. That said, there's not much more I can say about the film without ruining it for you, beyond mentioning the fact the new Terminator's a foxy chick; she arrives in our time nekkid except for a demi-wave, then spends the rest of the film in red leather, spike-heel boots and slicked-back hair - nice to see a cybernetic organism's first imperative upon travelling back from the future on an assassination mission is make herself look proper dirty for the lads.

Y'know, there's really no reason for her to be a Foxy Terminator, but that's okay. Can't say she's completely up my street, (she's far from hideous but in a world where she'll never sleep with me anyway, I feel I should be free to pick and choose which international-supermodels-cum-robot-killing-machines I would theoretically screw), but I much prefer looking at her back-half striding naked from a ball of time-travelling fire than having to check out Robert Patrick's sweaty electric man-ass again.

One of the things I did find myself being the only person laughing at in the cinema was a nice throwaway 'Commando' gag but, once again, if I tell you what it is I'll ruin it for you. So, in short - cyborgs travel back in time, try to top John Connor (mk.2) and that girl from 'Romeo & Juliet', (who has grown up into an absolute pig, in my opinion), ruck about it, repeat to fade. I will tell you that the ending is an unexpected bummer, (and I don't mean Vin Diesel suddenly appears from a side-door screaming 'bring me boys!' just before the credits roll), but in telling you that, you now expect the ending to be unexpected. Hmm. Shit. This isn't working out at all.

The film seems oddly small to me, despite having a fuck-off great $175 million budget; this may be because, despite the somewhat epic scope of the story, you rarely see more than three people on screen at any time, and when you do they're usually dead, or well on their fucking way, or in the middle of bleedin' nowhere. Schwarzenegger's good value for money, and for all the people who say 'oooooh, he
looks really old now', I say 'does he bollocks'. He's virtually unchanged since the last film - alright, a bit older, but not so much that you'd even notice unless you were choosing to be pernickety for no reason other than to be pernickety. See, I'm learning how to do this properly: but a few weeks ago, that line would have said '…unless you're being a cunt for no reason other than to be a cunt', but not any more. Got to think of the kids, haven't you…

…Which probably explains why nearly all of 'T3's rampant bloodfests occur off screen, save for one truly horrible moment in which Foxy Terminator thrusts her fist through the back seat of a cop-car and takes the wheel of said vehicle through the gaping maw in the cop-in-front's chest. That was very fucked up. Oh yes indeed. Very fucked up. Which makes the previous scene, wherein the girl from 'Romeo & Juliet's boyfriend is carved up off-screen by Foxy Terminator's arm-mounted industrial band-saw seem even dafter - his demise is signalled by the sounds of sawing and screaming, and a spurt of fizzy red blood across a close-up bedside photograph of him and his love - a device so clichéd that the whole auditorium giggled at it. Okay, so now you know the boyfriend dies. Man…

Look, if you're dithering over seeing 'T3', I'll just say that its 99.9% likely you, whoever you may be, went to see 'The Matrix: Reloaded', and 'T3' is way more entertaining than that link of self-important computerised dog-toffee. It even has a better car chase, for fuck's sake - oh yeah! A better car chase than '…Reloaded', no shit! No piss-holing around with CGI albino rasta ghosts, just a big old industrial crane tear-arsing after a tiddly little van, knocking seven shades of shit out of everything in its path, and swinging Arnie through the frontages of a number of unfortunate buildings. It doesn't feature kung fu or cool-looking cars, its just delivers a solid chase that has real suspense - mainly because none of the people involved in it can fly or turn into a gas or transfer their consciousness to any bugger in the world. If that crane hits John Connor, he's fucked - he knows it, Arnie knows it, we know it, and there we have this film's strength. Its not the best written film around, its not the most inventive, maybe not the best acted, but its got a sleek internal logic born of its predecessors that it sticks to and in turn logically develops, unlike '…Reloaded' which rewrites itself every ten minutes and wanks into the eyes of the first movie whenever it bloody well feels like it. John Connor's not suddenly going to become bulletproof or develop a third leg, or wake up to discover that films 1 and 2 were all a computerised dream, know what I mean? (Oh yeah, I'm still waiting for that one to come bobbing down the pipe in 'The Matrix: Revolutions', like some lump of cyber-coal in the electro-stocking guaranteed to ruin Christmas for nerds the world over).

If there's one word that adequately describes 'T3', it's 'solid' - it won't blow your mind, but you won't be disappointed either. Particularly the bit at the end when Skynet blows up the worl... Shit, done it again…