Directed by John McTiernan
Starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke, Richard Chaves, Jesse Ventura, Shane Black and Kevin Peter Hall
Time to go back to the past. Again. I mentioned a couple reviews ago that there was no pair of films that I watched more during my junior high years than the first two Predator movies, and it can't be overstated just how big of an influence these things had on those formative years. The whole concept of the Predator creature was so cool to 13-year-old me; not only because this was one of the few things that could be onscreen with Arnold and actually manage to make him seem like an underdog but because of just what the damn thing WAS. An intergalactic hunter who comes to conflicted areas of other planets to claim skulls as trophies? That ranks right up there with a cyborg sent from the future to kill the mother of the man who would defeat his machine compatriots in the future. Say whatever you want about Schwarzeneggar the actor, but you can't say that this guy doesn't pick projects that accentuate his strengths, because his movies are AWESOME.
Undoubtedly, Predator is one damn cool movie. It ranks pretty damn high on several lists. As far as sci-fi flicks, alien movies, '80s action movies, it's hard to find many movies better than this one. It started off as a script by two brother who took a joke about Rocky Balboa running out of earthly opponents and just morphed from there. If this alien is a hunter, then man must be the most dangerous game. And what men are the most dangerous game? Combat operatives. Bouncing one idea after another is often the way that the best stories are constructed. Add director John McTiernan, producer Joel Silver and the coolest crop of supporting actors around...and you have Predator. This is some magnanimous praise so far, isn't it, boyos? On with the show.
Meet Dutch Schaefer, played by Schwarzeneggar in all of his 1987 macho glory and the commander of an elite group of mercenaries. As the film opens, Dutch meets with old friend an present-day CIA agent Dillon (Carl Weathers, also in all of his 1987 macho glory that was just a shade below Apollo Creed but miles above Chubbs). Dillon has the assignment for Dutch and his team - rescue an American official held hostage by insurgents in some fictional and wholly substitutable (is that a word?) central American country. As an added bonus, Dillon is coming along. Ladies and gentlemen, there is your setup.
While Predator has some great stuff in store for us, the first act of this flick is some of the most kickass stuff you'll ever see in any action movie. For starters, we've got an unforgettable cast of characters and an even better crop of actors playing them. In particular, the duo of Mac (Bill Duke) and Blaine (Jesse Ventura pre-tinfoil hat) give the movie some of its best moments, but really, everyone in this cast is someone you'll remember by name. The team finds the members of the American team within short order, skinned and hanging from the trees, eventually finding the enemy camp and blowing it to smithereens in a really well-done sequence that has a weight and forward momentum sorely lacking from the Michael Bay movies of today. Must I mention modern movies and bitch about them in every review? Probably. During the attack, Dutch finds out that the operation was really nothing more than an assassination attempt cooked up by Dillon, giving us some nice tension as Act Two begins.
See, all throughout the action in the Val Verde jungle, we've gotten periodic glimpses of something stalking them in the wilderness. It's done via first-person POV shots, and clearly it's not from human eyes, because it looks like the stuff you'd see on an Apple IIe computer. We get the first glimpse of what it might look like after the village attack as it follows the group and picks up a crushed scorpion, and it's one of the more creative ways I have seen to introduce a menacing character. The following 40-45 minutes of the film show the creature eliminating the team one-by-one, gradually revealing more of itself as nothing more than a "blur." Only it's not a blur. It's camouflage. Smartness.
Yeah, it's true that Predator is more of an action movie than a horror movie. But when I was in seventh grade, this movie made me feel more tension the first time I watched it than any horror movie had in years. Hell, to this day, it's still a nerve-wracking experience. Picturing yourself in this situation is some pretty nightmarish stuff, and the kills? The Predator in this film is definitely more minimalist than the one we would see in subsequent films, where he had a whole host of cool gadgets and weapons to play with. This time around, he has a shoulder-mounted energy weapon, retractable wrist claws and his bare hands. It still works just fine, because it's the Predator's ability to go invisible and devise traps that gives the movie its pervasive sense of dread. Of course, once we actually DO see the thing, the movie manages to be one of the few flicks of its type to not disappoint us with the details. Dreadlocks, mandibles, and really freaky bug eyes fit in well with actor Kevin Peter Hall's 6'8" frame.
And that's not even mentioning some of the gory details of this flick. Make no mistake about it, there is a definite slasher movie influence at work here. The death scenes all have plenty of red stuff flying around, and most of them look like they really friggin' HURT. Especially Weathers' death, and I don't think that's much of a spoiler alert. But it's the story execution that really makes the movie feel slasher-rific. We start off with a large group of likable characters, we have the past evil (revealed to us in the form of a local prisoner who tells the soldiers that the "demon who makes trophies of man" returns only in the hottest summers), and we have the inevitable showdown with the final would-be victim. Yeah, it goes without saying that the de facto "final girl" here is Dutch. But the fight itself is gut-wrenchingly tense stuff all the same. Just like the best slasher flicks, everything has been stripped away but survival.
If you're looking for more superlatives for me to hurl at this movie, I'm pretty much out of them by this point. Predator was the right movie with the right guy at the right time, complete with some infinitely quotable lines of dialogue ("Payback time" and "Get to da choppah!" being the first things that come to mind). It's a good old-fashiond R-rated bloodfest and a special effects bonanza with director John McTiernan in the first of several collaborations with Joel Silver. And, to this day, it's still a flick that I can turn on late at night and actually feel some tension rising in my throat, all these years and approximately 181 viewings after I first watched it on TBS as a nerdy seventh grader. Bravo.
Rating time. Predator gets another **** out of ****, and I actually do like this movie a little bit BETTER than Ridley Scott's original Alien. Just a damn fun time from beginning to end. Check this one out.
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