Remember when “Miami Vice” came out a few years ago? It had everything going for it: a truly accomplished action director, a terrific cast and captivating source material. It promised to be a fun, interesting ride — maybe not an Oscar film, but solid summer fare. Then it came out and we got an overlong, unsatisfying mash of maudlin storytelling and Colin Farrell’s sideburns. Sighs of disappointment could be heard from miles around.

Mann does a little better in his latest, “Public Enemies,” but I do see the signs of a repeat performance. Again we have the truly talented director. We have the fabulous cast (Depp! Bale! Cotillard!) And we have excellent source material: the films follows the rise and fall of John Dillinger, a 1930s bank robber and show-boater who lived fast and died young. And, in general, it’s an homage to every gangland film ever made since Jimmy Cagney was walking. Mann appears to be hoping reignite our fascination with amoral bank robbers who shoot at police while riding the running boards of their getaway cars. And it’s a good time for it — anti-heroes abound in today’s films, and moral ambiguity fits our current sensibilities just fine.

All this would be great, if Mann and Johnny Depp (who plays Dillinger) had created an anti-hero anyone could actually care about. No one’s a bigger fan of Depp than I, but it’s pretty obvious he’s phoning it in here. Dillinger was a fascinating character. He understood the power of the media in shaping history, and he played it to his advantage. He was also fearless, and would walk in and out of police stations and prisons just to show that he could. We see scenes of both these attributes, but the real Dillinger; his motives, his inner life and his personality largely remain a mystery. Depp appears to be under the impression that a twitch of the eyebrow and a a half-smile constitute fine acting, and we know he knows better.

Depp’s supporting case fares much better. I was completely underwhelmed by Marion Cotillard’s performance as Dillinger’s dame, Billie, until a scene late in the narrative when she lets loose with a vicious, spitting, animal soliloquy that stops the show. It’s a version of “Stand By Your Man” with a hell of a lot more chutzpah. Bale does a surprisingly well-shaded performance of FBI Agent Melvin Purvis, assigned to the task force to capture Dillinger. Bale lures us into the belief that we’re watching the normal trope of the relentless, obsessed lawman and then shows us a real human being who loves his job and fears the increasingly draconian methods he has to use to do it. And Billy Crudup shows up doing a pretty damn good impression of a young J. Edgar Hoover — he’s sleazy and insincere in just the right way. Mann also includes a bunch of fine actors who show up, yell “Hey, I’m here!” and then leave again; Lili Taylor, LeeLee Sobieski and Giovanni Ribisi are just a few that make up the carousel. Since this story basically rests on Depp’s shoulders, it’s still pretty disappointing, but at least we have some good people to look at in the meantime.

I always give Mann props for taking chances with his camera work, but he’s doing some weird stuff in here. As with all action films made in the last ten years, the movie suffers a severe case of shaky-camera syndrome. Mann also seems way too fond of extreme close and low shots, sending the audience right up into the actors’ nostrils (an amateur mistake that’s far below what Mann’s capable of).

There is, however, one brilliantly executed action sequence: a shoot-out at a safe-house, followed by a midnight car chase. In this scene handheld cameras are used to their intended effect: a sense of controlled chaos that makes the audience feel as if they too are running through the woods, dodging the sniper fire. The car chase especially is wonderful: two cars barreling down a highway, with shooters firing while hanging on to the running boards for dear life while the night closes in on them. It’s a familiar scene, no doubt; we’ve seen this chase scene since the beginning of narrative film. And it still manages to terrify, exhilarate and take our breath away.

It’s a classic for a reason.

WEST SPRINGFIELD — These past months have found me warring between my unfailing optimism for a new Terminator film and my absolute certainty that I will be disappointed. That more than anything reinforces the fact that “Terminator Salvation” is all about the expectations game.

How did you feel about the original movies? What are you looking for in a Terminator film? Does the concept of a Terminator film mean anything more to you than a couple car chases and a pithy one-liner or two?

See, what made James Cameron’s two Terminator films such wonderful and enduring works of film was not the intense action sequences nor the cutting-edge special effects. It was, and always will be, the story. The emotional dynamic of the underdog human, the struggle, the fight against the cold machine is the foundation of the first two films. Central to the conflict was the question of fate, of destiny and most importantly of retaining your humanity even in the face of certain destruction.

“Terminator Salvation” seemed to try to incorporate those themes, but in large part it just didn’t quite work. For starters, with one notable exception, none of the humans seemed to really be human. They were tough, grizzled and war-torn fighters, but there didn’t seem to be any meaningful connection among any of them. Christian Bale’s John Connor was so far removed from the smart-ass, street-wise kid in “Terminator 2″ that the only reason I knew he was John Connor at all was because he kept yelling his name at me very intensely.

Bryce Dallas Howard’s character was criminally underused and seemingly relegated to standing around looking surprised. The soldiers in John Connor’s tech-comm unit all seemed to admire and respect him, but there were never any reasons given why. Why like John Connor? Why respect him? Why follow him? There’s not a single moment of levity, foxhole humor or any other sign of a bond between the people who are fighting for humanity. The movie tells us that the faces on the screen have relationships yet any evidence of those relationships is nowhere to be seen.

The most we’re shown of the indomitable human spirit is when John Connor gives a couple of speeches over the radio and we see people huddled around their radios, like a kind of post-apocalyptic fireside chat. When John Connor asks them to do something (or not do something, as the case may be), they listen to him. But again I ask: why?

In short, John Connor is most certainly not the emotional epicenter of this film. He is as much a machine as the Terminators he fights. He’s marching ceaselessly into the future where he’s supposed to be the leader of the human resistance blah blah blah, and things must happen how they are supposed to happen, and he needs to be the leader just, well, because.

I found myself wondering, what happened to “no fate but what we make for ourselves?” Perhaps Connor is supposed to be Terminator-esque, like Sarah Connor was in the second film, but to what purpose? Without an accompanying character journey for Connor, it just doesn’t make sense.

But, as I said, there is an exception. Anton Yelchin’s Kyle Reese is pitch-perfect. He gives a performance where he is definably the character that the audience first saw in 1984 and yet clearly not quite. He is young, yes, but he shows us that he is the kid who will become the Kyle Reese that we know. But even Yelchin’s performance isn’t enough to give the film the kind of emotional weight a Terminator film ought to have. It’s nice to see the young Kyle Reese, and the scene where he and John finally come face to face is satisfying, but there isn’t enough emotional energy devoted to this moment.

In “Terminator 2,” the young John Connor says to the T-800, “I wish I coulda met my real dad.” It’s a quiet line, but it’s one that shows just how much of a boy John Connor is.

Where is that kid in “Terminator Salvation?” John Connor doesn’t want to find Kyle Reese because meeting his father is the moment he’s been waiting for for his entire life; it’s because otherwise things won’t work out the way they’re supposed to. Or something.

While there were moments where the dialogue seemed to matter, most of it just seemed like filler. John Connor’s superiors talked just to talk. They said things just to say things, and a good portion of the dialogue felt clunky and unnecessary. There were a few good moments — particularly one scene with Bale and Howard — but there were also a few clunkers. Moon Bloodgood’s lines about a strong heartbeat or something were almost laughably acted.

Newcomer Sam Worthington was a bright spot, however. The story begins and ends with his character, Marcus Wright. Back in the 2000s, Wright is a death-row inmate who signs his life away to a comically bad Helena Bonham Carter. He’s executed, and we fast-forward through time to see him stumble out of the ruins of a Skynet stronghold into the dark and stormy night in one of the best scenes of the film.

Worthington delivers an understated and subtle performance, and his was one of the only performances that drew me into the story. His character is internal and private and uncertain, and Worthington shows all that physically. Yes, his native Australian accent slips in every now and again, but the essence of the performance remains despite that. Marcus is, without question, the only emotional stronghold of the film and I found myself more invested in his story than any of the others by a mile, mostly due to Worthington’s excellent acting.

Worthington’s journey of realization and actualization is profound. Any scene with him in it was better for it. In a movie filled with face-melting action sequences, a simple hand-to-hand fistfight between Marcus and some lowlifes was the best fight of all. The audience’s knowledge of what he is gives his story some actual dramatic tension, and his character made me believe that director McG had tried to bring something new and interesting to the franchise thematically.

In the end, it was clear that McG had thought about the themes behind the two Terminator films, that he respected them and that he was a fan. But there simply is no homage to the themes that made the original films classics.

Yes, there are giant robots in this movie that blow stuff up and are scary and have great leitmotif sound effects. There are impressive, blow-your-socks-off action sequences (particularly one with a helicopter that was a continuous take, and WOW), replete with explosions and clever uses of vehicles.

But is it a Terminator film? Not really. It’s a film that tells us it cares about the human heart (quite literally so, and abusing the concept of metaphor to the extent that I’m not quite sure it even counts as a metaphor anymore), except that it doesn’t really SHOW us that it does.

I suppose my conclusion is this: Great action, but even with its ambition, promise, and Worthington’s excellent performance, the general lack of subtext and the mostly-missing character development forces “Terminator Salvation” to stay right where it is: great action.

Terminator Salvation director McG showed up at the New York Comic Con yesterday to present a reel of never-before-seen footage from the unfinished film and to hold the geek equivalent of a town-hall meeting in the long campaign to win over the existing Terminator fan base.

In the process, he cheerfully suffered heckling over everything from his name (which is a old-hat subject by now and one that McG explained with a lot of expletives) to the recently-exposed Christian Bale blow-up. In brief, McG said that emotions running high on a movie set made freak-outs like Bale’s inevitable. Especially, McG added, because Bale’s a “very serious actor,” a line that prompted several members of the crowd to shout choice quotes from the audio clip. He went on to say that in his experience, getting in someone’s face when they’re in the middle of an explosion was never the best way to handle it, and that he and the producers had decided to simply wait for Bale to calm down.

“That remix is pretty hot,” he continued, drawing laughs from the attendees, and assured everyone that “(Christian and Shane Hurlbut) were fine that day” and that the two are “buddies” who worked successfully together for another month after the incident.

He made light of the blow-up later in the Q&A, when an audience member with a strong accent asked the first question. “What don’t you fucking understand?” he shouted. “We are done professionally!”

Jokes aside, McG made it clear that he was seeking a discussion about the film footage and impressed the die-hard Terminator fans (myself included) by insisting that he wanted to hear the fans’ suggestions on the material. He was going to take those suggestions, he said, to the cutting room floor.

The reel was about eight minutes long and contained a ton of footage of the machines that Terminator fans have only gotten to see in brief clips in previous movies. McG talked at length about the goals of the film, one of which was to portray the evolutionary steps leading to Skynet’s Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator model (the “T-800″). Another goal, he explained, was to show how Kyle Reese becomes Kyle Reese, how he becomes the man who would sacrifice himself for John Connor. And to be honest, that potential character arc alone is enough to embolden my faith in the film.

And if those eight minutes are anything to judge by, Terminator Salvation promises to be an adrenaline ride with a lot of explosions. There were some unfinished action sequences in the reel that I can only imagine will be thrilling when the effects are completed.‚ 

McG fielded a surprising amount of questions after the viewing and answered one of the fans’ most pressing questions about the film; namely, to what extent were the events and timeline of the lackluster Terminator 3 versus that of T1 and T2 honored in Terminator Salvation. In brief, McG assured audiences that the spirit of the film was true to Jim Cameron’s original works but that there were aspects of the third film, such as the way Judgment Day comes about, that he incorporated into his movie.‚ 

A representative from an Arnold Schwarzenegger fansite (who McG invited up to the stage for wearing a Cyberdyne tee shirt) asked appropriately about the possibility of an Arnold cameo. McG revealed to the audience that they were working on a revolutionary technique for “doing something with that” and that he wasn’t sure if it would even work. And while he didn’t answer the question directly, McG made it clear that they were working on getting some version of Arnold (but not the Arnold of “today,” which drew chuckles) in the film as part of Skynet’s development. Personally, a Terminator film isn’t a Terminator film without Arnold, so I hope that this revolutionary technique works.

All in all, McG was eager to convince the tough crowd that he was honoring the Jim Cameron films and that he, like us, was a Terminator fan. Based off the footage that I saw (combined with his self-deprecating and expletive-laden humor) I have to admit that I am finally starting to believe. The film looks great, the cast looks great, and all in all it seems like McG’s Terminator Salvation might actually be a true Terminator film – not just an action flick, but a movie that says something profound and makes you think.‚ 

So McG — if you let me down on this one, we are fucking done professionally.