Predator was never my favourite of the franchises, I was more of an Alien and Terminator man myself, and never found it much fun to play as a Predator in the Aliens Vs. Predator games. My interest in the original was slightly muted for a long time, but when I finally saw it I was quite jazzed as to how good it actually was. It's a pretty simple affair plot-wise, but the film's strengths lie in how the action is paced rather than plot exposition. An alien big-game hunter arrives on earth to collect human skulls for trophies, and encounters a badass bunch of commandos in the rainforests of central America, themselves there to hunt for a missing CIA guy. That's it really. Anymore complex and it wouldn't have been as much fun. The ensemble cast consist of Arnie, Rocky's sparring partner (Carl Weathers), that guy from Commando (Bill Duke), an ex-porn star (Sonny Landham), the writer of Lethal Weapon (Shane Black) and Jesse Ventura as himself. There are others but I forget who they are, mainly because they are pretty forgettable. Wooden is a generous way to describe the acting on display, but there's also a great deal of thickly-cut ham that makes the whole thing tick along marvellously.
He hasn't got time to bleed, you know.
The film could probably be shorter, in all fairness. The opening half hour occasionally resembles an orienteering exercise gone wrong, with lots of glowering and the pointing of guns at threatening looking trees. The action set-piece is pretty explodey and fun, with some vintage Arnie one-liners ('Stick around!') and despite that Arnold told Carl Weathers at the beginning that they were 'a rescue party, not assassins' they're clearly not against carrying some of the heaviest weaponry in history with which to 'rescue' people. The predator stalks them for a while, like a big breathy extra-terrestrial pervert, and then finally he starts taking them down one by one. It's all pretty good stuff, but as the numbers deplete, that is when Predator starts becoming special. It becomes true survival, and the set-pieces get tighter and more elegant as the film winds to its climax. The whole soldier ethic becomes quite poignant as their numbers are whittled down, and then of course, Arnie squares off with the Predator itself. The fight itself is a pretty fucking cool affair, with loads of macho-ness courtesy of the Austrian Oak and naturally showcasing the charisma that made him such a big star in the first place ('You are one ugly motherfucker!') before defeating the big ugly bugger and avoiding a nuclear explosion by moving out of the way. Ah, happy simple days.
Natty dreads, mon.
Yeah, it's silly. But you know what? It's bloody cool silly. The predator is a brilliant creation, not only with Stan Winston's prosthetics but also with all the other little things; the heat vision, the weaponry, the code of honour...it all works for some reason, when logic dictates that it should really be a hideous B-movie mess. Yet Predator defies all logic by being serious enough to be taut and suspenseful, and yet having the sheer nads to cast a bunch of actors not exactly renowned for their serious dramatic work. Kudos to John McTiernan for making everything work. So with this in mind, does the latest one have a lot to live up to? Well, yes it does. Predator 2 is never regarded as well as this one, and the Aliens Vs. Predator films managed to maim, kill and utterly eviscerate any good reputation Predator may ever have had. The original is great, a lot of what followed was rubbish. So Predators has a bit of a job at redemption on its hands.
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