When Hollywood is in need of a hit film, they rarely seem to look at making something new. These days the big film companies either remake an old classic or, as is the case with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, they bring out a sequel to a well-known hit.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the only actor from the first two films who appears here, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He’s as integral to this series as Anthony Hopkins was to the Hannibal Lecter films. The wild card this time is that the other "terminator" who comes back from the future to kill John Connor before he can wage war on the machines after they wage war on humans is a woman. Now I’ll be the first to admit that when I originally heard about that premise I thought Terminator 3 would be nothing more than a big-budget version of the woefully bad 1995 film, Species, starring Natasha Henstridge. I was wrong. As T-X, Kristanna Loken is every bit the relentless killing machine that Schwarzenegger was in the first film and Robert Patrick (as T-100) was in the second.

Mind you, Schwarzenegger and Loken aren’t the only people helping T3. Terminator 3 is flawlessly directed by Jonathan Mostow, who was at the helm for the film Breakdown (one of the best movies of 1997), and like Breakdown, T3 is kept clipping along at a rapid pace. James Cameron wrote and directed the first two Terminator films, so Mostow had big boots to fill -- and for the most part he does.

From a technical point of view, Terminator 3 is topnotch. While the special effects may not break any new ground when you compare T3 to some of the outstanding effects-type films we’ve seen over the last couple of years, no one is going to criticize it. The action scenes, which form the bulk of the movie, are exhilarating and never become tiresome the way they do in so many other films. The computer-generated visual effects are used so convincingly they simply blend into the story. It’s a great-looking roller-coaster ride of a film, but that’s not to say that Terminator 3 couldn’t have been better.

Both previous Terminator films had plenty of action, but they relied more on the interaction of the characters, and, more importantly, had clever stories that kept you talking long after you left the theater. Schwarzenegger can still zing-off effective one-liners, and he does it throughout this film, but his bond with the other characters certainly isn’t as strong as in the other two movies. Plus, both Claire Danes as Kate Brewster and Nick Stahl as John Connor combined don’t have the presence that Linda Hamilton did as Sarah Connor in the first two installments. Then there’s the story, which is good, but certainly not as in-depth or as creative as the previous two were. Terminator 3 simply follows what’s been done in the other films, more or less filling in the blanks, but doesn’t add much that is new. Still, a skillful but flawed Terminator 3 is a whole lot better than, say, a repetitive and monotonous The Matrix Reloaded, making T3 the must-see action film of the summer.

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