As people will by now have been drilled to repeat in pubs and playgrounds across the world, the sci-fi blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgment Day is reckoned to be the most expensive film in history, having cost anywhere between $US80m and $US100m to make, according to which publication you choose to believe.

To the inevitable first question, "Is it any good?", the answer has to be"Yes", though whether any movie is worth the gross national product of a Third World nation to create is a moot point.

Like its 1984 predecessor, it's a very entertaining film that doesn't take itself too seriously, the advertising catchline "It's nothing personal" summarising the nod-and-a-wink approach of its star.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a consummate screen performer who knows how to turn his strictly limited acting abilities into an affectionately familiar persona. At the preview screening for this film, many responded to his one-liners as if he were a colourful personal friend.

The film is also surprisingly thoughtful, having replaced some of the semi-fascistic aspects that gave its forebear some of its more dubious audience appeal with a less vicious, more feminised point of view.

In the first film, also directed by James Cameron, Schwarzenegger played a cyborg sent from the future to kill a woman called Sarah Connor before she could give birth to her son John, destined to become the victorious leader in a future war between humans and machines.

In the sequel, mankind's future saviour is a boy approaching teenage years whose mother, now played by Linda Hamilton, is incarcerated in a maximum security psychiatric hospital, thanks to her incessant warnings about the imminent demise of homo sapiens. Here she spends her time body-building in preparation for the role destiny seems to have casually kicked her way.

Into this situation drop two "terminators" from the future, one John Connor's would-be assassin, the other his protector, who becomes united with mother and son in a battle for the future of the planet.

The reason for the film's ludicrous budget - apart from its star's covetable salary - soon becomes obvious, with one of the cyborgs taking the form of an LAPD cop (Robert Patrick) who proves capable of changing bodily shape at will, melting into pools of mercury-like liquid and coalescing into new modes of being.

The state-of-the-art special effects used to achieve this are extremely impressive, sometimes mind-boggling, but it's a credit to the film that they haven't been allowed to substitute for a smart, tightly constructed script.

The perennial paradoxes of time travel riddle the story, and as paradoxes, require a leap of faith, being unable to withstand close examination, but that doesn't stop them being fun to toy with.

More significant is the way the film has been skewed to a feminine viewpoint. It's impossible to describe this without giving away a major character twist, and those who want to discover it for themselves should stop reading here.

While Schwarzenegger was the supposed villain of The Terminator, a pump-action killer with no regard for human life, many people apparently identified with him (no doubt including the odd budding young massacrer among them).

Director James Cameron is quoted in the press notes, apparently approvingly, as saying that "audiences embraced the fantasy of being totally stripped of all moral constraints and having the ability to do exactly what they wanted whenever they wanted".

Terminator 2's inspired twist is to have the Austrian with the mountainous musculature playing the hero, a "good" cyborg whose young charge, shocked by his initial recklessness, makes him promise that he won't kill again.

Not that this stops him shooting a man in the knees, quipping, "He'll live", nor (along with Hamilton) spraying bullets every which way whenever men in uniform intrude. How, one asks, do they know their victims will live?

A pivotal point occurs when Hamilton, gazing upon a child's playground, has a vision of the nuclear war which she knows is to occur in the near-future (a Star Wars-style defence system will unleash its deadly load), and decides to intervene to prevent it from occurring.

For a change, it's a woman who plays the active role, and she's acting from essentially female motives - inspired to protect human life after watching children at play.

There's an element of having your cake and eating it about this; cowriter/director Cameron is, after all, the man who co-wrote Rambo.

When Schwarzenegger throws a man onto a hot plate in the opening minutes, I don't think the audience is meant to be filled with feelings of pity, for instance, nor to admire the hero for his cooking skills.

Doubtless the film was originally conceived as the perfect "date" movie, designed to simultaneously appeal to males for its violent, expertly-directed action sequences and to women for its strong female hero and pro-peace message.

But in stitching a dialogue into its fabric about the morality of violence, Terminator 2 is at least attempting to change the rules by which the modern action film is played.

It proves that crackingly fast entertainment doesn't have to be mindless, and it manages to do so, with an endearingly cheeky sense of humour.

 First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on September 5, 1991