Directed by Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World, Game of Thrones (TV Series)) and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Last Action Hero, Junior), Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Great Gatsby, White House Down), Jai Courtney (Jack Reacher, Insurgent, Divergent, The Water Diviner) and Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones (tv series), Dom Hemingway, Spike Island).
Sci-Fi Action Adventure; 126 mins, 12+
The fourth film in The Terminator series and, following the novelty of the first, arguably the best. Superb special effects used to the maximum to enhance the machines, giving them personalities.
The basic premise is that John Connor (Jason Clarke) leads a successful raid on Skynet but not before they send a Terminator back to 1984 to kill his mother, Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) before she can become a mother and bring him into the world and ultimately defeat Skynet. While the audience needs to be alert to the vagriancies of time travel and what would or would not happen if such-and-such scenario were prevented from happening, etc., the concept of newer-model terminators sets the tone for the storyline to be somewhat believable.
John Connor sends his friend Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) back to 1984 to protect Sarah Connor, where an evolved John Connor also joins in the hunt and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator character, the Guardian, has been assigned to protect her too. What ensues is a game of hide-and-seek-cum-cat-and-mouse, but at an ultra high tempo in which the issue of time travel ensures that some characters meet younger / older versions of themselves in what has become a fractured timeline.
