I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was inclined to step out of the theater to check if I was sitting in the right room. But there it was, definitely a Predator, but obviously totally misplaced in a ridiculous movie - ridiculous story, ridiculous characters, ridiculous acting, ridiculous everything.

I was so upset. One of the diamonds of a movie genre thrown in the dirt and made fun of. If you want to see how that's done, watch this one.

A total waste of money - on production side and on cinema visitor's side.

Its just not good. The first predator created atmosphere; you were being hunted. The only "Predator" film to deliver another dose of this was Predators.
This film falls completely short of its predecessors (yes, all of them), but does leave you with a strong impression that this was a cash grab to squeeze any life out of a franchise that surpassed its EOL a long time ago.

A crushing disappointment.

The hopes were high for this latest Predator rebirth, not because Shane Black starred in the great first Predator film, so therefore he surely must care about the project? But because he's an excellent writer and director. Shane Black can count Lethal Weapon(S), The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight on his CV, he was the man who put Iron Man back on track after the sag of part 2. Plus he is the creator of two of the best buddy buddy neo-noirs this millennium (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang/The Nice Guys), So how come The Predator stinks of lazy cash cow manure?

Plot in a nutshell sees the universe's most lethal hunters unleashed on Earth due to the meddling of a soldiers kid and some nosey scientist types. The fate of mankind rests with a group of damaged ex-soldiers and a rather cheesed off female scientist.

We have a rehash mishmash of what we have seen before in Predator 87 and Predators 2010. A group dynamic fighting a seemingly invincible foe. The subsequent science aspects such as human DNA inference/reasoning etc never really add up to much, serving only for a bunch of standard actors shouting, swearing and spouting hopelessly weak jokes and series re-treads. When you think the pic is about to up a gear, get rivetingly dramatic, a poor slice of humour comes our way either by vocal spillage or visual drivel (puppy pet Predator dog, really?). There's a bunch of plot threads that just dangle never to be pulled (PTSD/our hero's family strife et al), and the Predators loose on Earth - with different agendas - are confusingly shifted about by a screenplay not sure where it wants to land.

Plus points? Well the cinematography is superb (Larry Fong), and you can't fault this for action quotas, there's plenty of it and it's bloody (both red and green type). The score is the traditional one we had from Alan Silvestri back in the 87 film, in fact it hardly deviates from it and yet Henry Jackman gets the credit. Of course some of the jokes will work for some folk (I would be lying if I said a Whoopi Goldberg gag didn't make me laugh), but the terror has gone, these Predators are no longer scary creatures. This reeks of a troubled production going hand in hand with a cash cow that not only narratively adds up to nothing really, but of a franchise death knell. Shame. 3.5/10

Boyd Holbrook - a sort of love child of Mel Gibson and Michael Biehn - is the army sniper hero ("McKenna") who finds himself on the wrong end of the law after he and his team encounter the eponymous killing machine in the forest. Lucky to escape with his life, and a few souvenirs from the wreckage, he makes his way to a cantina where he posts his trophies to his wife and son before being taken into custody. Out in space, another of these would be visitors decides it needs to get that stuff back and so arrives duly determined to annihilate all who get in it's way. It turns out that the young "Rory McKenna" (Jacob Tremblay) is little short of a genius with AI - and pretty soon he, dad and feisty biologist "Brackett" (Olivia Munn) - along with a ragtag band of gung-ho prisoner/soldiers are facing up to their looming terror. Can they survive? Should they survive is probably the better question. Aside from a few scenes at the start and an admittedly lively fifteen minutes at the end, this is almost entirely devoid of the beastie we switched on to see. The dialogue is poorly written, expletive-ridden and banal; the characterisations are really shallow and there are far too many irrelevant sub-plots to distract from the (limited) focus of this 110 minute ramble of a film. The old adage - "if it ain't broke..." comes to mind. This is as far removed from the excellent 1987 introduction to this monstrous creature as it's possible to get and is, quite simply, a waste of video tape. There are plenty of adequate visual effects and pyrotechnics, but this film definitely had me rooting for the creature in the mask pretty much from the start!

**"Long story short"**

Unlike the clueless reviewer (on a different website) who I quoted in the headline, I will not proceed to write 5 paragraphs of meaningless drivel about a movie I hate.

Usually all of the AvP movies, Alien, Predator and the cross overs are at least a solid 3.5 stars. Of course the original Alien trilogy as well as Predator 1, 2 and even Predators stand out as being very original. The difference between the originals and the spin-offs is clearly the tone they set. In this movie we get a comic book style presented, with by no means bad CGI (dogs looked more real than in Predators for example), a secret research conspiracy, and charismatic heroes getting slaughtered (or not, no spoilers). Just like in the graphic novels, the pace is neck breaking. The ending felt almost rushed, to introduce the new Predator Killer Weapon. It is understandable how regular movie goers are put off by the constant over-stimulation, but I would not want it any other way. The action is over the top, definitely. But there was great attention to detail how the action scenes played out exactly, as opposed to lesser action films in which a flurry of cuts leaves a thinking audience just confused about what just happened.

Sure, I would have loved a darker vibe throughout the film too, especially in the beginning the score reminded a little of a Disney orchestra playing. But "The Predator" was a hell of a ride and deserves a special place among the spin-offs.

28 November 2018

I am migrating my reviews from a different site which has become simply garbage. TMDB looks awesome and I look forward to be a part of it.