THE robots are returning, same as they ever were. German automatons Kraftwerk have made a replicant comeback, re-cycling their Tour De France electronic hit from 1984, the very year that Arnold Schwarzenegger's android was sent back from the future to protect problem child John Connor in The Terminator.

Ironically the original John Connor actor, Edward Furlong, has proved such a wild child himself that he has been replaced for the third instalment by Nick Stahl. James Cameron, who wrote and directed both The Terminator and its 1991 sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, is not re-joining the party either, but of course Schwarzenegger is back, just as he promised he would be 12 years ago.

Arnie's star in Hollywood has fallen since those days, and so the primary reason for making Terminator 3 is not so much the rise of new machines but the re-rise or otherwise of its leading man. Or cyborg as he is here once more.

Where The Terminator was dark and full of nuclear Armageddon foreboding, T3 is foremost a proficient, self-referential blockbuster rip-off of T1 and T2, bigger, louder, with longer chase scenes, a sexy new opponent and plenty of jokes at his own expense by Arnie, as he sends up the iconic status of both himself and his obsolete T-101 Terminator. Like the Terminator, Schwarzenegger is fighting to show he is not past it in his md-50s.

To prove it, he is first shown naked, newly arrived back on Earth on a mission once more to protect John Connor, the future saviour of the human race. Connor (Stahl) is hiding "off the grid", no phone, no address, no job, no memories... and no future if the T-X (a new model of Terminatrix) has her lethal way. The shapely, shape shifting T-X (Kristanna Loken) has been sent to assassinate not only Connor but veterinarian Kate (Claire Danes), his high-school first love who is destined to be his wife.

While Stahl's gnarled Connor does his Hamlet act and a pallid Danes pitches to be the next Jodie Foster, the human interest plays second fiddle to the stunts and special effects, orchestrated with boyish enthusiasm and his tongue in his cheek by director Jonathan Mostow on a $170 million spending spree.

Loken's sleek, blonde, leather-clad T-X tries to out-terminate Arnie's ageing cyborg, each returning to the fray for another battering, like that Monty Python knight. Loken's Terminatrix is amusingly humourless - boys will enjoy her breast enhancement trick - while Arnie lets the stunt work do the action for him but is still a killer at the deadpan one liners.

The mechanical, unremarkable yet enjoyable Terminator 3 does enough to justify its return but, open ending or not, any thoughts of a T4 should be terminated.

Updated: 09:01 Friday, August 01, 2003