Terminus

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.

Unlike Mad Max, we do not much about any apocalyptic event occurred before the time of the story which takes place in a near future. A strong government is ruling, rogue-military and police are keeping peace, borders are close and secured, and above all, no game is allowed. "Game leads to thinking, and thinking to rebellion". On the other side, an underground mad scientist called "Sir" (Jurgen Prochnow, excellent as usual)is trying to perform cloning experimentations and cybernetic enhancement of the human brain, by helping his own clone (called "Doctor") to create two children whose brain has been upgraded and own will annihilated. The boy "Mati" is the last product of the "Doctor". In order to test him, "Sir" has organized a forbidden game which consists of a truck race across forbidden areas and borders, to reach the "Terminus", i.e the hidden base of the "Doctor". In fact, "Sir"'s purpose is to create an army of young devoted and intelligent fellows in order to take power over the government. Leading the truck race, Mati has created a new era of a computer, "Monster", integrated to a truck driven by Gus, a female truck driver. Somehow, "Monster" experiments failures which do not appear to be purposeless.

Relationships between the two drivers and "Monster", Mati, an orphan girl met in a prison camp, are the heart of the story, and their hope and faith in freethinking, love and protection of the most defenseless ones, is considered to be the main danger for both the government and "Sir".

This movie is dealing with a chase, a race, manipulations and strange hope.

The cinematography is very unusual, the Grey/green/red colors remind the visual universe of sci/fi comics. You need to enter this very personal environment to be delighted in watching this movie.

I remember I was astonished as a teenager, seeing this movie in theaters, long ago.

Karen Allen, Johnny Halyday and Jurgen Prochnow, as well as "Monster" performed this unusual movie as if they were part of Glenn's universe and bad dreams.

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.

Do not be fooled be the PG rating. Within the first 8 minutes F-bombs were dropped twice plus other expletives. There were harsh comments about war and ethnicity. I stopped watching.

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.