By Geno McGahee
In 1987, PREDATOR was released and it was amazing. Arnold Schwarzenegger headlined a great cast of tough guys to take on an unstoppable force in the jungle. The Predator was an alien and he looked great. He was huge and menacing and when he went head to head with Arnold in a fight, it was a great moment for action, horror and sci-fi. The movie proved successful and opened the door to a sequel, but this time, they were placing the predator in the city. That was a great idea, but the 1990 PREDATOR 2 didn’t live up to the expectations and paled in comparison to the first, but it may be treated unfairly. I am guilty of trashing this film, but after watching it again and taking it for what it is, I have to say that it was a pretty good monster movie.
The film begins in LA with some gang warfare. LT. Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) is on the case and while fighting with these gangs, he sees the predator and realizes something strange is going on. The bad guys are being eliminated from the streets by some force that is skinning them and hanging them upside down. Harrigan is taken off the case by Peter Keyes (Gary Busey), but he won’t be denied. He will find out what is killing the people of LA.
A new detective is brought onto the team and it’s a disaster. I am a big fan of Bill Paxton, but his portrayal of the character “Jerry Lambert” is terribly annoying. I’m guessing they asked him to play it like an asshole and he succeeded, but the character is unrealistic and lame. When he’s on the screen, the movie loses me.
Sexy in the RUNNING MAN, we see Maria Conchita Alonso return as Leona Cantrell, but the short hair is not flattering. She brings little to this film and even misses the mark at sex appeal. She doesn’t seem to really be into this role either. She is merely go through the motions and is easily forgettable and that sucks. She was a great addition to RUNNING MAN but she misses the mark here.
Danny Glover has never really had a chance to be the lead in a movie with a budget and an intention of making a series. Glover did really well, but he can’t be compared to Arnold, and that is the biggest thing going against him. Had the comparison not been there, he would have really impressed in this film. If you take this film as a separate movie and take it for what it is, Glover does a great job as a lead.
The highlight of this film is the predator itself. I’m guessing that it’s a dude because it doesn’t have tits, but I’ve never seen the predator’s big reptilian dick. I’m guessing he’s hung like a horse, but throw out the alien junk and let’s just talk about how cool he looks and the cool new environment he’s in. Seeing the predator climb buildings, ride atop the subway, and run the city streets is very neat. Another neat element is the knowledge that this predator has. He’s not like the one that took on Arnold. That one was a newbie that didn’t know the language and only learned a little here and there, copying what he heard. This new predator knows a lot of the language and uses the terms in the right context.
At one point, Danny Glover tells the downed predator that he’s one ugly mother, which prompts the predator to counter with “mother fucker.” He must have heard about what was said to his brother predator and it really is a racial slur of sorts to the predator race. Calling him an “ugly mother fucker” is the worst thing you can say to a predator and shame on Danny Glover saying that.
When the predator is hanging by a thread from the side of a building, he tells Glover that “shit happens.” This proves that the two could have sit down and hatched things out. This predator could communicate with the human race and was doing the world a favor by ridding it of the gangbangers. Judging by Glover’s refusal to speak with the predator one on one and calling him the predator slur, it’s obvious that the problem isn’t with the alien. The problem is with mankind. If an alien came down from outer space and killed all of the bad elements of the human race AND he spoke to me, I would thank him.
PREDATOR 2 is an underrated film. The biggest problem this film has is that some of the characters are so unbelievable that you can easily lose interest in the movie, but if you can accept that this movie is not perfect and that this movie is not what the first one was, then you can enjoy what it is. It is a cool monster movie with a great setting, and we got to learn more about the predator character. I would have loved to see a follow up to this movie with the predator learning more profanity and telling people off rather than just saying “shit happens.”
I recommend PREDATOR 2. It might be shit to some, but shit happens mother fucker, as the predator would say.
Rating: 6.5/10
