Sky High On Sci-Fi -- Arnold Keeps The Action Tight And The Body Count High As He Blasts His Way Through `Terminator' With `No Problemo'

----------------------------------------------------------- XXX "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton. Directed by James Cameron, from a script by Cameron and William Wisher. City Centre, Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, Seatac Mall, Thunderbird drive-in. "R" - Restricted, due to extreme violence. ----------------------------------------------------------- He's back - and this time he's the good guy!

Not that it matters.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - reprising his most famous role in this sequel to James Cameron's 1984 sci-fi hit - has reached the point where he can do no wrong. The crowd at the promotional screening I attended Monday was cheering Schwarzenegger's casual killings and maimings before they were even aware of the switcheroo that Cameron had pulled on them.

Ten years have passed since Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) faced down and destroyed the first Terminator - a homicidal robot from the future who has a grudge against the human race.

But things still aren't looking good. Sarah has nuclear war on her mind. She knows when it's coming, down to the time and date. If that's not bad enough, there's the constant possibility that other Terminators will be sent to kill her or her son (Edward Furlong), John. The kid is destined to become a great military leader in the War Against the Machines that follows the nuclear war.

Not surprisingly, Sarah's ranting about time-traveling Terminators and nuclear war has cast doubts on her mental health, and she's been institutionalized. John, in the meantime, has become a small-time juvenile delinquent, living with foster parents he despises. He's on the outs with his mother, too, whose ravings about his leadership role in a post-apocalyptic world sound pretty far-fetched.

But they're not. Encounters with two robotic types at the local mall are enough to convince him his life is in danger.

His problem: How to tell which is trying to kill him and which is trying to save him?

As it turns out, the trigger-happy Schwarzenegger-model is preferable to the T-1000 make (portrayed by a frosty Robert Patrick). T-1000 is a liquid-metal android that can change shape at will. Once young John and the pro-human Terminator hook up, it's just a matter of springing Mom free and helping her destroy the work of a famous computer scientist whose research will lead to the nuclear war. And something has to be done about Arnold's body count. It's far too high. There's really no need, John explains, to kill every guy who pulls a gun on you.

Schwarzenegger is in impeccable deadpan form, milking his tough-guy image for all it's worth and getting laughs out of the Terminator's wooden parroting of slang ("No problemo" probably will be a catch-phrase to reckon with this summer).

Hamilton, trained by an ex-Israeli commando for her newly militarized role (Sarah used to be a waitress), looks ready to lead an army into any inferno. Furlong's John is a cheeky, spirited kid, unfazed by the small arsenal going off all around him. But they aren't the stars of this show.

The real scene-stealer is the special effects department's T-1000. Cameron has taken the most memorable image from his underwater epic, "The Abyss" - the living tentacle of water that mimicked the faces it came across - and developed a whole language from it. T-1000 can masquerade as anything and is virtually indestructable. (As soon as anyone shoots it, the gaping holes fill themselves right up again.)

Behind all the wizardry, however, the plot machinations are pretty crude. The film's opening 15 minutes are more blast than impact, and its finale is stretched to blusterous lengths.

Then there's the incompatibility of content and message. Cameron admits in the press kit that this is "a violent movie about peace."

Make that "an extremely violent movie." Spikes go through actors' heads and midriffs, and unfortunate things happen to motor vehicles, too. The script's pious sign-off - that if a machine can learn to value human life, people can, too - seems a bit disingenuous when the film is so packed with brutal incidents. This is a movie that adores its own violence, then shakes its head with regret over it. The right hand knows what the left is doing - and isn't at all bothered by it.

Who knows what kind of message that leaves you with? It isn't the one in the script.

Still, if you're hoping to be brutalized this summer, "Terminator 2" is the film to do it.