PredatorSome hunt for sport, some for survival. Love it or hate it, hunting is a primal element of society, pitting two forces against one another, where only the more skillful and resourceful emerges victorious. Predator is a sci-fi/action movie about an alien hunter--the eponymous "Predator" (Kevin Peter Hall/voice by Peter Cullen)--who lands in the thick jungles of South America and begins stalking, killing, and taking trophies of soldiers, predominantly various American soldiers infiltrating the jungle on a mission. Enter Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his team of colorful, tough soldiers on a rescue mission. Once the job is finished, Dutch and his crew suddenly find themselves as the Predator's newest targets.
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Directed by the iconic (and infamous) action movie director, John McTiernan, Predator has survived being just another "Eighties action flick" on the basis of being a truly exciting and tense movie, filled with clever subversions of the audiences expectations. In essence, the movie is broken up into three parts (or acts, if you like), beginning with a brief moment of dramatic irony with an alien spaceship launching a mysterious pod toward the Earth. After this prologue, Dutch and company descend from a helicopter as the percussive and invigorating musical score by Alan Silvestri starts in. Dutch is depicted as a tough guy from the start, with his cool attitude and a cigar always at the ready. When he reunites with a former colleague turned CIA operative, Al Dillon (Carl Weathers), they lock arms in a show of machismo and camaraderie. All signs are that this movie should play out like any other war movie set in the jungle, suggesting something in the vein of Schwarzenegger's earlier Commando. Yet this is only the start of how Predator is playing with our expectations by posing as a standard action flick, keeping that sci-fi nugget in tow until it's just right to spring it on us. To really sell us on this, we get a basic setup for the plot from Dillon. A cabinet minister has ostensibly been abducted by some insurgents, and Dutch and his team--which are apparently the most heavily armed exfiltration team ever--are tasked to bring him out. Well...turns out Dillon was spinning a CIA yarn about that, and instead planned to use his old friend and company as "assets" to fundamentally assassinate the guerillas. This is the kind of plot that would in and of itself be appropriate for any old action movie. But as stated, Predator just wants to lull us into a false sense of security. More than a few things don't add up before the big firefight at the guerilla camp, notably the trussed up and skinned bodies of some Green Berets which the team comes across en route. Dutch correctly surmises that they were who Dillon sent in before his team was tapped, but even he cannot figure out why such a gory reprisal was warranted. For our benefit, we get POV shots from the Predator, depicted like an infrared scan. This is an important detail and not mere affectation. It helps to reinforce that the film's antagonist is alien in many senses of the word. It also acts as a counterbalance to the Predator's similarities to the soldiers he hunts and why. All are well-armed and capable of killing...it's just that the Predator is more so. The Predator employs tricks like mimicry to hunt his quarry, not unlike how some hunters use a bird call. These similarities between human hunters and the Predator inform that intense final confrontation between Dutch and the Predator, where it's more than just a game of high-stakes cat and mouse--it's a face off between two opponents engaged in the most dangerous game of all.
Predator ranks among not just Schwarzenegger's most memorable films, but among the most memorable action movies of all time. The movie is loaded with quotable lines that have made their way into the collective lexicon. For example, "I ain't got time to bleed," comes from the uber-macho Blain Cooper (Jesse Ventura), who sports a hat right out of Crocodile Dundee and is constantly shoving a copious amounts of chewing tobacco into his maw. (Ventura gets enough sound bites to rival Schwarzenegger here. Is it mere coincidence that these two would both eventually become state governors? Who can say?) Most of these emerge in the first part of the movie, where the illusion that this will be just another action flick where one-liners are part and parcel are expected. Fast forward to one of Dutch's men, radio operator Rick Hawkins (Shane Black, who would go on to write and direct the 2018 remake to Predator), getting unceremoniously killed, with only an insurgent captive named Anna Gonsalves (Elpidia Carrillo) as a witness to the slaughter. She describes the jungle as "coming to life" to kill him. For the time, Predator employs some truly clever special effects, such as how the movie depicts the Predator's optical camouflage. This was achieved by chroma keying someone in a red suit (since the jungle was predominantly green) and reshooting scenes with a larger lens, then combining the scenes to create this unearthly invisibility effect. (Compare this effect with the way that optical camo is depicted in the video game, "Metal Gear Solid", and you can see how influential this must have been.) The suspense ratchets up with each member of Dutch's team getting picked off from scene to scene in the second part of Predator. The team employs various methods to try to deal with this pervasive threat, only to have the superior hunter override them at every turn. And just when all seems lost, when Dutch is alone against the creature, he falls off of not one, but two waterfalls back-to-back, and washes ashore coated in mud. This is where Dutch discovers that no matter how technologically profound the Predator's equipment may be, even sophisticated techniques can be thwarted by simpler ones when applied correctly. Mud...the mud masks Dutch's heat signature, rendering him virtually invisible to the Predator. This leads into the third and final act of Predator, which is the film at its strongest and boldest. One man against a killer, forced to rely on not just his brawn but, more importantly, his brains to survive. Dutch lays traps, creates a battleground that he understands and can use to his advantage, He fashions his own bow to fire explosive arrows at the creature, and a pincer trap which he hopes that he can lure the Predator into for one final coup de grace. There's no room for error, and any slight deviation from the plan could mean it all comes down around him. This is tense! Much of this part of the film is a sharp contrast to the beginning. There are few to no quips (save for when the Predator finally removes his mask), and it is dark and menacing. (You'd be forgiven for finding yourself holding your breath!) We know that this Predator isn't messing around, since he was more than capable of dispatching Dutch's own party of supreme tough guys with nary a thought. The odds are against our hero. Can he make it? Will he make it?! That's the thrilling sensation that makes Predator ultimately so gripping and memorable, and an iconic example for the genre to follow ever since.
Recommended for: Fans of an exciting and tense action movie that deftly manipulates our expectations and delivers some riveting moments that we recall long after the credits roll. The legacy of Predator has been such that there have been sequels, reboots, and even comic books and video games about the iconic antagonist almost forty years later. Bloody and brutal, yet sharp and smart, Predator caters to an audience who can appreciate its turns in its plot and tone, all while delivering thrills at every turn.
Predator ranks among not just Schwarzenegger's most memorable films, but among the most memorable action movies of all time. The movie is loaded with quotable lines that have made their way into the collective lexicon. For example, "I ain't got time to bleed," comes from the uber-macho Blain Cooper (Jesse Ventura), who sports a hat right out of Crocodile Dundee and is constantly shoving a copious amounts of chewing tobacco into his maw. (Ventura gets enough sound bites to rival Schwarzenegger here. Is it mere coincidence that these two would both eventually become state governors? Who can say?) Most of these emerge in the first part of the movie, where the illusion that this will be just another action flick where one-liners are part and parcel are expected. Fast forward to one of Dutch's men, radio operator Rick Hawkins (Shane Black, who would go on to write and direct the 2018 remake to Predator), getting unceremoniously killed, with only an insurgent captive named Anna Gonsalves (Elpidia Carrillo) as a witness to the slaughter. She describes the jungle as "coming to life" to kill him. For the time, Predator employs some truly clever special effects, such as how the movie depicts the Predator's optical camouflage. This was achieved by chroma keying someone in a red suit (since the jungle was predominantly green) and reshooting scenes with a larger lens, then combining the scenes to create this unearthly invisibility effect. (Compare this effect with the way that optical camo is depicted in the video game, "Metal Gear Solid", and you can see how influential this must have been.) The suspense ratchets up with each member of Dutch's team getting picked off from scene to scene in the second part of Predator. The team employs various methods to try to deal with this pervasive threat, only to have the superior hunter override them at every turn. And just when all seems lost, when Dutch is alone against the creature, he falls off of not one, but two waterfalls back-to-back, and washes ashore coated in mud. This is where Dutch discovers that no matter how technologically profound the Predator's equipment may be, even sophisticated techniques can be thwarted by simpler ones when applied correctly. Mud...the mud masks Dutch's heat signature, rendering him virtually invisible to the Predator. This leads into the third and final act of Predator, which is the film at its strongest and boldest. One man against a killer, forced to rely on not just his brawn but, more importantly, his brains to survive. Dutch lays traps, creates a battleground that he understands and can use to his advantage, He fashions his own bow to fire explosive arrows at the creature, and a pincer trap which he hopes that he can lure the Predator into for one final coup de grace. There's no room for error, and any slight deviation from the plan could mean it all comes down around him. This is tense! Much of this part of the film is a sharp contrast to the beginning. There are few to no quips (save for when the Predator finally removes his mask), and it is dark and menacing. (You'd be forgiven for finding yourself holding your breath!) We know that this Predator isn't messing around, since he was more than capable of dispatching Dutch's own party of supreme tough guys with nary a thought. The odds are against our hero. Can he make it? Will he make it?! That's the thrilling sensation that makes Predator ultimately so gripping and memorable, and an iconic example for the genre to follow ever since.
Recommended for: Fans of an exciting and tense action movie that deftly manipulates our expectations and delivers some riveting moments that we recall long after the credits roll. The legacy of Predator has been such that there have been sequels, reboots, and even comic books and video games about the iconic antagonist almost forty years later. Bloody and brutal, yet sharp and smart, Predator caters to an audience who can appreciate its turns in its plot and tone, all while delivering thrills at every turn.