Terminus

Terminus

Terminus

Yes, this film could have been a six or seven, but the plot of this thing is so incomprehensible at times that it seems like a film they just started filming without a script. I got the basic gist, but so much stuff happens that goes nowhere or seems a bit out of place and man those lips! Absolutely horrifying! Then there is the fact they got a known actress to be in this and she is so obviously sleep walking through this thing for a paycheck and you have Terminus! The plot is something along the lines of some sort of game being played. A woman, named Gus and play by Karen Allen from Raiders fame, must drive what looks like part of the vehicle from Damnation Alley to a location without getting caught and if she accomplishes this, she gets her weight in gold. Add a bizarre kid that seemingly is doing something, another kid who hitches a ride, a dude with red hair and who looks messed up, but you do not find out what he is doing, a truck driven by a crazy guy full of what looks like creatures from the film The Dark Crystal and the real hero of the piece a dude with a robotic arm and you have your film! Like I said, I get the gist of the game, but not why they play it or what is up with anything else. The acting coming from Karen Allen is so obviously just for a paycheck. Everyone else hams it up to the point a bad guy who I thought would be important is killed in rather quick fashion. The lead guy is okay, I guess, playing the part of a Mad Max type lead as he drives this wreck through what is sort of a wasteland, but at the same time nothing like a wasteland. Not sure what is going on in this place as you have medieveil villages complete with castles, rave bars and various other places one normally does not associate with the apocalypse. So, the film had interesting elements, perhaps had they tried to explain what was going on better or what this world was it may have worked. Had they dedicated more time to the strange guy driving the truck that became invisible or the weird guy with the red hair it could have been a rather cool futuristic film. As it is, you just kind of wonder what the heck is going on.

Doomily set within a dismal, undisclosed totalitarian future, a fancy schmancy, AI-powered Monster Truck navigates this increasingly hostile terrain, part of a secretive, underground anti-establishment game. The participant's dangerous travails are masterminded by a playful, preternaturally precocious, genetically modified boy genius, Mati. Jürgen Prochnow as a trio of tweaked Tuetons, a Tank Girlish Karen Allen, and grizzled, steel-fisted hero Johnny Hallyday are perfectly cast in this dazzling roustabout cyberpunk actioner!!! This consistently entertaining Franco/ German production benefits hugely from its excellently charismatic actors, a catchy score, beautifully designed sets, futurist vehicles, and the snazzy Sci-future costuming. There's plenty of zest to stylishly neon-hued dystopian actioner 'Terminus', plus there's a despotic Comic Book evil scientist to B-Movie boost the explosive vehicular action!!! Glenn's locomotive Cyberpunk classic is an appealing admixture of Mad Max, Damnation Alley, Knight Rider, attractively garlanded with a uniquely European savour.

If you love the semi-post-apocalyptic car warrior movies then this one isn't off the mark. It's got a bit of cheesiness to it but the main plotline is on the mark, and the surrounding story and action fit the theme just fine. On the other hand if you love Rifftrax/MST3K then this is a film that is basically written just for that genre. Either way it's campy and fantastically so. No - it's not "good" in any normal sense of the word, but it is definitely in the so-bad-it's-good camp of campy movies. The set work and costumes are probably the most professional part of this work. They were right on target for this theme... except maybe for the main bad-guy who seemed to have no connection to the actual plot but had very strong transvestite Ronald Macdonal vibes, and the talking truck... not really spoilers - just watch the thing and see for yourself. There are definitely things to criticize: The supporting actors all appear to have recieved their lines only the morning of their shoot, and the writing for the main characters and their character names were apparently penciled in the day before. However, the main actors forge on and do their best, although the editing cuts the scenes together in such an discordinate way that even their amazing acting powers dcannot save the film.

Terminus is much more about style than story. It embodies that second half of the 80s where bizarre and unexplained aesthetics were cool for their own sake. You want a gender-ambiguous evil boss with bright red hair? You got it. A man randomly doing dumbbell presses in the background of the henchman's lair? Okay, fine. Primitive wire-frame 3D graphics with no purpose other than to "look cool"? Naturally. A truck run by a talking computer with real lips? What more could you ask for? Well, a cohesive plot for one. Terminus drops you into its world with many questions and only a few answers. It makes the viewer the fish out of water and you either go with it or you don't. The loose plot revolves around "The Game". The goal of the game is for "The Driver", piloting what looks like a large armored motor home outfitted with a talking computer and several gadgets, to reach the end. If they reach the end they'll win their weight (literally) in gold. What is the broader purpose of the game? Entertainment? A bread and circuses tool of the government? It's never quite explained. Having grown up on video games in this era, where many had only the barest suggestion of a plot and your imagination was left to fill in the blanks, I wonder if it's vagueness was intentional. Very often the goal of video games was simply to get to the end of the level and onto the next. The "why" was a distant second to the joy of dodging and shooting enemies, racing against the clock or using your arsenal of weapons and gadgets. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, particularly in contrast to the way many modern films set up questions but then beat us over the head over-explaining the answers. Leaving a few questions unanswered makes these worlds feel bigger and full of possibilities. Though, even if this was the intent with Terminus, one might decide it went too far and simply leaves us confused. I was first attracted to Terminus because of Karen Allen, who is only in the film for the first third and was obviously hired to lend star power. Still, after the excellent Star Man (1984), it's hard to believe this is what she chose to do next. Terminus is trying to be a great many different films in one. Part Mad Max, part techno-future dystopia, part American tough guy 80s action film, part super vehicle (Knight Rider, Airwolf) - all while infusing everything with a Euro-jank earnestness. In its defense, it never feels like it's ticking off boxes to achieve this. It falls short, but it does try. This isn't a good film and only recommendable to those who seek out this kind of below grade trash. It's cheesy '80s visuals and sounds have aged well and will definitely take you back to those simpler times when the imagined dystopias of back then sometimes seem preferable to the daily reality of today.

There are great designs here. Interesting ideas. But it seems noone really tried writing a script. No stakes are given. No real goals. The hero truck tries to get to Terminus. How far they have left? No clue. Is there an impending deadline? Maybe. At the beginning they talk about shaving off an hour of transport time. Great. Then they stand still for a day or so. No penalty.

For the time the FX of this movie where very good, also the stunts, explosion and car trucks etc. But sadly this movie tells no story... we get a bunch of clones played by Jürgen Prochnow, one who seem to be more of a women with a red wig red nails and some some odd reason stays hidden. The other is Jürgen Prochnow again a clone in a truck that becomes invisible. And the other Jürgen Prochnow is a more distinct high class man that seem to control de child matis. The driver of the truck Karen Allen is a sort of a wiz, but gets captured by who knows who they are, in prison she meets Johnny Hallyday, they fall in love? And then she is murdered by the gang. Hallyday for some odd reason is outside the jail and steels her truck to escape... The computer is monster very well designed but the truck is a regular truck nothing special.... We are never told why the driver must get to terminal, the game they play and why the main character played by Jürgen Prochnow want them dead...... This movie is a huge missed opportunity and could have been so much better with a great story.

Luc Besson has had success producing American-style sci-fi epics, but this unusual Gallic entry operates on sheer chutzpah. I enjoyed it, on an infantile level. Wearing its influences on its sleeve proudly (starting points were MAD MAX and BLADE RUNNER, naturally since they were the trend-setters in the '80s), TERMINUS or END OF THE LINE (as its title song proclaims) is a fake Hollywood product, with the cast speaking English. (Obviously there was a French-track edition made for local audiences, too.) Karen Allen is winsome as the tomboy heroine, looking great and acting tough as a truck driver in a modernistic game. The plot details are hardly worth recounting, but revolve around a dystopia where control is all. Jurgen Prochnow is well-cast in three roles, all of them baddies, as essentially different aspects of the control mechanism. A young boy, bred for the future perfection of the species (and weeding out of "human" characteristics) is the genius programming the computer named Monster who guides the trucker in this game. Goal: reach the end of the line. SPOILER ALERT: Allen is killed off surprisingly early in the film, giving the fans a frisson of the type Hitchcock pioneered in knocking off Janet Leigh early on in PSYCHO. Johnny Hallyday, in full Jim Jarmusch white hairdo, takes over her role and is surprisingly effective as the anti-hero fighting not only the system but the powerful denizens of the outside world (looks like Eastern Europe) in whose territory the truck-driving game is being played. Along for the ride with Hallyday is a cutesy little girl who is key to the whole plot, stolidly played by the director's daughter. Helmer Pierre-William Glenn is a top French cinematographer, whose work is synonymous with quality (notably Bertrand Tavernier's favorite d.p.). Taking a flier here at the director's chair, he delivers a competent but uninspired product -a movie that is one of those Saturday afternoon/rainy day time-killers -not even fit for video release in America. It's not a bad film at all, merely a mediocre one and clearly non-competitive against the American (or British) sf movies.

There is something about 80s movies and there is something about European movies that makes me enjoy them. Luckily this film has both, as a French-German coproduction featuring (mostly) actors from all over the world. I mean, you have Karen Allen, which we know from Raiders of the Lost Ark, is dubbed in French and appears to be the main character. Until she doesn't. Then we have Johnny Hallyday, the man who brought rock and roll to France, who's character arc is fascinating because he is a tragic hero for no reason whatsoever. There is Julie Glenn, playing Princess, because why not? Her father wrote the movie. And Gabriel Gabon, who one would recognize from the STNG episode The Bonding more than from anything recent he's done. Finally, Jürgen Prochnow. He's a big, known actor, so we'll give him three roles! And every one of these people are acting, only in different films. There is absolutely no consistency. I half thought that they tried to do three movies, all having Jürgen Prochnow in them, failed, then stitched this together and dubbed it in French for continuity. Now, the story. There is none. There is a truck that must reach a mysterious destination as part of a sport that no one seems to be aware of. There are high stakes (5 million francs! - pinkie finger to mouth) but also hidden high stakes. They are so large and so hidden, that we never find out what they are. The sport apparently consists of a red truck that has to be stopped by grey trucks from reaching a destination (one that was never designed with a truck parking). Only the grey trucks are so small that I can't understand how they were supposed to stop the big red one without self destructing. There is a whole quarter of the story dedicated to a backward militaristic region that has no relevance to the major plot of the film (or maybe has the only relevance). Everything from cars, trucks to wooden shacks seems to smash into something and explode. Then there are doctors, clones, laboratories and mysterious "press and authorities" that are so mysterious (yeah, you guessed it) that we never see them. Nor any world order that would permit such things. Bottom line: I miss the craziness of the films back then, the risk taking, the possibility for something like this to exist. It's a bad film, but it feels wild, inspiring, almost magical, because in this day and age you cannot find stuff like that anymore even in the lowest budget tiers. Everything is curated, standardized and put in little boxes that all look the same. Terminus is a wild ride in the head of a random guy who thought of a vague story, got together a bunch of people and acted on it.