Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Critic Reviews

Terminator 2 is a state-of-the-art action movie, all right: It gets you thinking that the most reasonable thing might just have been to blow everyone away.

Mr. Cameron has made a swift, exciting special-effects epic that thoroughly justifies its vast expense and greatly improves upon the first film's potent but rudimentary visual style.

It's a tank of a movie, big, powerful and hard to resist.

Brutally beautiful, darkly comic sci-fi

Nobody, I think, will complain that it doesn't have enough action.

As a fancy mechanism fueled by the pleasure of watching legions of people and equipment being summarily destroyed, this is pretty hot stuff.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is more comfortable and assured here than the first time around, reprising a role so perfectly suited to the voice and physique that have established him as a larger-than-life film persona.

Few films have matched it within the science fiction genre for sheer white-knuckle exhilaration.

A humongous, visionary parable that intermittently enthralls and ultimately disappoints. T2 is half of a terrific movie -- the wrong half.

It's Cameron's show; he's the reigning king of movie pow, with dark wit and a poet's eye for mayhem. T2 cost a reported $100 million, and you can actually see where the money went.

Tons of action, violence, and special effects.

It's just not as good a film as The Terminator, despite soundly surpassing it in a few areas.

Pulls out the stops, setting the gold standard for expensive, explosive summer blockbusters.

Cameron directs with a huge amount of style and personality, effortlessly jumping from the $6.4 million original to the $88 million sequel.

...one of the most indelible examples of the contemporary action film...

For all its state-of-the-art pyrotechnics and breathtaking thrills, this bruisingly exciting movie never loses sight of its humanity. That's its point, and its pride.

The special effects from this 1991 classic action flick still hold up in today's world. T2 is a timeless classic that will live on forever.

This remains one of the greatest and most adored action movies of the 90s.

A fireworks grand finale that never stops.

...a milestone in the evolution of action films and their now-omnipresent computer-generated imagery.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an enjoyable, often exhilarating piece of filmmaking, with a wry sense of humor to boot.

It's big and clever, and one could argue that even Skynet would appreciate its technical skill.

Structured as a simple chase, the story sags midway, but the first hour and last 30 minutes display an enjoyably relentless bravura.

Oh, it's well made. It's also overproduced and overlong and the ultimate in the effects-driven movie syndrome.

At the end of both movies, I find myself overcome by an extraordinary swell of emotion.