Terminator 6 – Rise of the Managers: Movie Review

The Bottom Line
This oil and gas industry sci-fi revenge fantasy thriller fails to deliver on all fronts except one: utter and extreme boredom.

Director-Screenwriter
Swiss-born Rudolfo Wankdorfer

Cast
Jennifer Anniston, Keanu Reeves, Harvey Keitel, Adam Sandler, and a cameo appearance from Arnold “The Schwarzty” Schwarzenegger himself.

In this low-flying, CGI-heavy, snoozer, a group of technical professionals are keen on overturning a zombie-waltzing, wide-eyed population of managers and executives who are hell bent on terminating every plan proposed in downtown Calgary’s oil and gas sector.

It’s hard to make everyone happy. Just yesterday, I brought Snickers bars for the whole office and it turned out that one person was on a diet, another didn’t like caramel (?!), one person told me that eating chocolate was against his beliefs, and someone else had a nut allergy or whatever. Whatever.

Switzerland-born director Rudolfo Wankdorfer has learned this the hard way, but instead of bringing chocolate bars for the office staff, he inconsiderately hand-delivered to his audience cow patties rolled in shame and dusted with remorse.  He may as well have sprinkled cyanide on them because after watching this movie, you’ll want your life to be over.

This more industry-specific than usual effort from Wankdorfer starts out with an all-star cast including the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Keanu Reeves, Harvey Keitel, Adam Sandler, and short scene with Arny grunting something or another.

The setting is downtown Calgary; the year: 2050. Only 1 giant oil and gas company exists in a post apocalyptic-like wasteland of a province that suffered decades of significant oil downturns, starting in late 2014.

Enter Stan Finkster, the Senior Vice President of Vice Presidents at Google Oil Inc. This character, played by none other than the venerable Harvey Keitel, and all of his management colleagues return from an APEGA conference held exclusively for oil and gas managers. It is at this conference where the group of industry leaders consumed inordinate volumes of skunked Moose Peace 3000 beer, and the ensuing mayhem is laughable at best, suicidal at worst.

The entire management and executive ranks of Google Oil Inc. turn into a population of what appears to be robot-like humanoids who roam around aimlessly rejecting every proposal put forth by technical and support staff. And without giving too much away, a team of technical professionals lead by senior reservoir engineer Scott Simulane and Philbert Ruckingness, a development geologist, coordinate an uprising of staff to overturn the rise of the managers.

The typical over-dramatic over-acting laid on thick by Simulate (played by Keanu Reeves) nicely offset the try-to-be-funny-but-it’s-not-working-anymore antics of Ruckingness (who is played by Adam Sandler). Jennifer Aniston’s character played a romantic interest to Keanu, but her character quickly got lost in the action.

At the end of the day, the revolution’s sole goal is to terminate the great grandfather of the present day’s APEGA president in order to save the future’s past in the present day – a very tense situation indeed.

This is by far the best movie ever made by Wankdorfer, because it is his first. And we here at 2P News sincerely hope that it is his last and only.

2P News gives Terminator 6: Rise of the Managers a refreshingly light 1.5 out of 5 stars.