The Infiltration Unit: Terminator 2's Brilliant Game of Good 'Bot, Bad Cop

Robert Patrick's "mimetic pollyalloy" T-1000 could look like anyone. For most of T2, he looks like an LAPD patrolman.

I've very proud to have contributed the concluding essay of The Dissolve's Movie of the Week coverage of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, long one of my sentimental favorites. My piece examines how cowriter-director James Cameron's decision to disguise the film's mysterious villain, the advanced T-1000 Terminator played (mostly) by Robert Patrick, as a uniformed Los Angeles police officer anticipated our growing discomfort with police in general and the L.A.P.D. in particular at the start of the 90s. It also explores the film's ironic connection to the tragic beating of Rodney King by four L.A.P.D. officers near one of T2's key locations while the film was in production. Read it here.

The Battle of Los Angeles: Rodney King, reviewed.

Roger Guenveur Smith performs his haunting and perceptive 65-minute monologue Rodney King.

My review of Rodney King, Roger Guenveur Smith's one-man play about the man he calls "the first reality TV star," is in this week's Washington City Paper.