By Geno McGahee
I, like most, am a huge fan of the 1987 film “PREDATOR” with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was the perfect monster movie that mixed in explosive action and featured a prime Arnie in all his glory. The alien in PREDATOR was very cool-looking and had many sweet abilities, quickly becoming a popular character and leading to sequels and spinoffs and reboots. In 1990, PREDATOR 2 was released with Danny Glover and I don’t care what anyone says, that movie ruled. You can’t expect Glover to have the presence that Arnold had, but when you take that movie as it is, it is quite good. In 2004, ALIEN VS PREDATOR was released and that stunk and so did the sequel to it. The more that they developed the character of Predator, the more they fucked it up.
Things got better in 2010 with PREDATORS, but not by a great deal. It seemed to capture more of the essence of the monster but it was rather forgettable in the end. Now, in 2018, we have THE PREDATOR, because all other variations of a title were taken, and we get a mixed bag. It’s a fun mixed bag, but it’s a mixed bag nonetheless.
We begin with Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), a military sniper with a talent for killing people. He’s prepared to take down some bad guys and rescue some hostages, but a problem arises. The Predator has crash landed and is on the hunt. McKenna’s team is killed and he barely escapes, but he steals the helmet and the arm piece before going on the run. The government isn’t too far behind and catch him because they want to keep the alien under wraps.
Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) is picked up by the feds and brought to a secret facility to see the captured alien that they have chained down. It was nice to see Jake Busey working again. He plays a scientist that leads Casey to the alien…a small role, but he did well. Jake should get more work.
It was really cool to see the Predator locked down when she walks into the room. May have been a good time to use a line like “this is a good way to catch a predator…where’s Chris Hansen?” Then again, creep humor may not have been what they were going for in this one. It would have worked though, especially if the predator sent sexually suggestive comments to a human minor, or even an alien minor. I’m OK with throwing an alien in prison if they abuse a minor alien.
As expected, the predator gets loose and we get some really cool scenes. The visuals of this film is its strong point without question. Watching the predator storm down the halls and kill a bunch of soldiers was good fun, and watching him jump from building to building was quite awesome too. This is when the fun factor reached a 10 out of 10.
In the meantime, Casey has been put into a bus with a bunch of former soldiers that are mentally damaged. Nebraska (Trevante Rhodes), Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key), Baxley (Thomas Jane), Lynch (Alfie Allen) and Nettles (Augusto Aguilera) are a strange group and are very amusing, especially Key and Jane, two buddies that argue constantly but are best friends. Baxley has Tourettes and says strange things at just the right time. They compliment the rather bland character of Quinn, which stinks because he is the star of the film.
The group set out to take down the predator who is now after Quinn’s son, Rory (Jacob Tremblay), who has Asperger’s, and has the predator gear that his dad stole. The group of loons, Quinn and Casey, who they saved, are all on a mission to kill the predator, but their problems get bigger when an 11 foot predator lands on earth with two alien dogs. This is where the film began to lose me a little.
Super predator kills the regular predator and now wants Quinn’s son for reasons that they later reveal. I won’t spoil it, but it has nothing to do with that to catch a predator stuff I was talking about earlier. Even though I wasn’t big on the look of the super predator, when he’s fucking shit up, it’s a good time. They just did some variations on the look that I wasn’t high on, but he was still rather cool.
A final showdown leads to a victory for the humans, but the ending sort of sucked. (Spoiler) The first predator was a good alien that stole a ship, came to earth, and wanted to warn the species that we are killing our planet and left behind a predator suit to help the humans fight off the inevitable alien invasion the predators were planning. OK, if you have a predator suit, you might be able to stop one predator, maybe two, but if they come down by the thousands or millions, you’re going to be sucking predator dick if you have or don’t have the costume. Also, why the fuck does he care about humans? All we did to his species is kill it. In every movie, humans are firing guns at them. Perhaps that predator was just a rebel or maybe he was sexually harassed by those big predators. Who knows? But whatever the case, he sold out his race.
THE PREDATOR was a good movie, but Quinn wasn’t a good character to lead with. The group of loons were awesome and helped, but just being a tough guy wasn’t enough. The character was pretty shallow. In the end though, I highly recommend this film. There is plenty of fun in this film and an obvious love of the Predator character. It is the best follow up since PREDATOR 2. Have I mentioned I liked that movie yet?
Rating: 7/10
