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90This movie doesn’t cop out. It doesn’t go for fake, feel-good warm fuzzies, and it’s not for the faint of heart. Terminator 3 has guts. It has a LOT of guts. And it’s a rare thing for any movie – whether it’s a summer blockbuster or an indie arthouse flick – to have guts.
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90Here's a picture that you actually want to see a second time, not for the sake of further wrapping your head around its gnarly conceptual matrix, but because of the sheer visceral charge it provides. Here, at long last, is a summer movie -- like its precursors in the Terminator canon -- worth its weight in cybernetic organisms.
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90T3 delivers the goods. A hard-hitting, straight-ahead sci-fi actioner with none of the pretentions and ponderousness that have put at least a portion of the public off of "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Hulk."
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88The effects in "T3" are spectacular, and the action sequences -- particularly the fights between the good and bad terminators -- are exhilarating.
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83With him (Schwarzenegger), we return to a franchise we never knew we missed, surprisingly grateful for the star's generosity -- and evident pleasure -- in strapping on the old sunglasses and blasting adversaries to hell.
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80An expertly paced and efficient sci-fi thrill machine, "T3" effectively marries impressive action sequences with persuasive storytelling and its star's uniquely appealing style of "No" drama -- as in no reaction, no expression, no emotion of any kind.
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80Tried hard to honor the spirit of the franchise, not exploit it, and take it to a new level and a surprising destination.
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78Reality has overtaken the movies here, which, I suppose, makes T3 all the more cathartically appealing. At least onscreen we have Arnold Schwarzenegger in our corner.
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75May lack the mythic pow of the 1984 original and the visionary thrill of T2, but it's a potent popcorn movie that digs in its hooks and doesn't let go until an ending that ODs on apocalyptic hoo-ha.
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75Against all odds this "Terminator" deserves to be welcomed back.
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75This is easily the funniest of the Terminator movies (although not, it should be stressed, the lightest). It is also the shortest and most compact.
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75This third installment is the loudest, dopiest, and least inventive of the three. But what the movie...lacks in intelligence it makes up for in sheer doom.
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75Gets the most bang for its buck by letting the camera linger on the spectacle, and allowing tension, not flashiness, to be its hallmark.
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75It puts almost everything it has into its explosive set pieces, but manages to instill the audience with just enough emotional involvement. If, Ah-nold decides to come bach again, this installment should ensure he has an audience.
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75Though this film doesn't have the novelty value of the first or the complex plotting of the second, it boasts the most spectacular single sequence.
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75In a summer of comic book super-operas dense with psychological torment and sprawling well over two hours, the unpretentious efficiency of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is refreshing.
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70Lacks the wonder, surprises and supercool attitude Cameron achieved. "T3" is no weak sister, though. With Arnold Schwarzenegger back as the iconic title character and an often witty, fast-paced script by John Brancato, Michael Ferris and Tedi Sarafian, audiences worldwide will embrace the new film.
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70Pedestrian but appealing.
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70T3, while far from a classic, is an overachieving, mercenary sequel that's short on thrills, but surprisingly long on laughs and surprises.
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70Overall it's reasonably thrilling anyway. If you're hoping for a brilliant revisionist take on the franchise, forget it.
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70At its screeching, wall-breaking best, “T3” achieves heavy-metal slapstick.
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70At its metallic heart, T3 is another chase movie -- one figure relentlessly tracking three others, mostly in cars, at high speed through implausibly underpopulated Los Angeles streets.
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70The brute force of Terminator 3 is relieved, I'm happy to say, by Claire Danes's winning performance as John Connor's reluctant accomplice (whom the production notes describe, not inaccurately, as an "unsuspecting veterinarian"); by many of the special effects, which don't seem obsolete at all, and, yes, by the sinister trix of the Terminatrix.
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70As Mostow proved in “Breakdown” and “U-571,” he can churn out excitement at a steady pace; whether he can handle dread--altogether a more unstable material--is another matter. [14 & 21 July 2003, p. 85]
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67As an action film it roars forward with agreeable, transporting energy.
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63Is Terminator 3 a skillful piece of work? Indeed. Will it entertain the Friday night action crowd? You bet. Does it tease and intrigue us like the earlier films did? Not really.
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63Terminator 3 moves at not-quite-breakneck speed, and the shape-shifting, metal-melting special effects aren't exactly spectacular.
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63That's not to say Terminator 3 is terminally awful -- just banal, merely humdrum, more conventional horror flick than science-fiction myth, and a whole lot less than what came before.
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63The good news is that Schwarzenegger is more entertaining than ever as the Terminator T-101 cyborg.
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60Picking up some 10 years after the previous film left off, this stripped-down, intelligently conceived follow-up is a respectable conclusion to the Terminator trilogy.
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60I don’t mind the movie’s retro-ness, but I wish Mostow didn't take pulp so seriously.
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60Where Judgment Day exhibited the profligate sprawl of a military operation, the leaner, less grandiose Rise of the Machines has the feel of a single Hummer careening through an earthquake in downtown Burbank.
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60For all the hype and the inevitable box office bonanza, Terminator 3 is essentially a B movie, content to be loud, dumb and obvious.
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60Less about the characters than about the first two movies, whose best scenes it congeals into ritual or parody.
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50If none of this seems particularly fresh, you're right. "T3" is strikingly similar to "T2" and "T," reflecting Hollywood's reluctance to tamper with a hit series.
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50Has its moments, and Schwarzenegger is as buff and tough as ever. But there's a flat feeling about this effort that's unmistakable and inescapable.
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50Begins promisingly and entertains for a stretch because you think it's leading to something more than one of the movie year's flattest conclusions.
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50Unfolds as a thrilling piece of entertainment, but it has a third act and ending that don’t work and shouldn’t ever work.
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50The villain comes back more times than Wile E. Coyote. I found it tiresome and witless and numbingly repetitive, but action mavens won't feel cheated.
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40Wastes no time getting very loud and very silly and never really lets up.
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25Pointless and mind-numbing.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 79 out of 122
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Mixed: 13 out of 122
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Negative: 30 out of 122
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"T3" lacks what made "T2" and "T1" a masterpiece, but it still has the blockbuster spirit within the movie.
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ZenoM.3
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Thorn4