The Predator

The only good scene in the film

In 1987 action film nirvana was attained with the release of the Arnold Schwarzenegger starring Predator. It's slightly dated now but it's still brilliant fun. There's been 4 follow ups to it so far, each of very varying quality. Predator 2 was a good gory laugh. Alien Vs Predator sucked. Alien Vs Predator : Requiem was quite possibly the worst film of 2007 and the last one was Predators which was fun but forgettable fluff. 8 years later we get the release of The Predator written and directed by Shane Black who wrote the original 31 years ago. How does it compare to the original?? Not very favourably at all as it happens. 

Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) is an army sniper on a mission in Mexico when he witnesses a spaceship crashing and it's inhabitant killing his comrades. He's nabbed by U.S. government agents who want to discredit him and keep the discovery secret so they can do their own research on the alien being. But something else was chasing the spaceship to Earth on a mission of it's own and now it's up to McKenna and a bunch of ex soldiers to take on the extraterrestrial threat and defend his family.

I really wanted to like this. I'd heard a lot of negative things but was still optimistic as the 1987 film was badly received at the time too. But nope. It's not a good film and is downright shoddy in places. Yes, it has a couple of cool moments but in between you'll be cringing at humour Roy Chubby Brown would turn down for being too low brow and racking your brain trying to understand some of the onscreen happenings and certain leaps of logic made by the characters. Some horribly shot action scenes don't help matters either. Bad writing is very evident but most of the blame for this comes from post production troubles that saw the entire climax of the film reshot and whole chunks of plot cut away but it also seems they snipped away any moments not absolutely crucial to the story. There's no connective tissue between scenes. Things just happen with no explanation and at times director Shane Black seems to realise this but thinks that throwing more and more gore at the screen will cover up the gaping plot holes. It doesn't. Give me scene setting moment or a small explanation of something over a triple decapitation anyday.

If you've just come for the blood and guts you'd probably be pleased. It's definitely the most brutal film of the series and a battle in a government facility in the first half of the film is a real highlight but it's all downhill from there. It's just a big ol' pile of meh. Characters you don't give a shit about fighting an alien being that you'll actually want to win. All the people in this blend into one, no one person is properly defined. One smokes a lot, one is a woman, one tells jokes, one has Tourette syndrome (this is predictably mined for humour in a way that will leave you watching from behind your hands), one is a father and one is a kid who supposedly is autistic but that aspect seems to disappear halfway through the film. No one matters. I wanted the Predator's pet dog to have a happier ending than any of these people. Yes, it has a pet dog. Two in fact.

When we heard Shane Black was directing this it was a reason to be optimistic. After all he wrote the first film and look how well that turned out. Since then he's made Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3, two very entertaining films which were funny and exciting, attributes you'd hope he'd bring to The Predator. But he's left no mark of himself on this film apart from his trademark kid character. It could have been written and directed by anyone. A fine cast is wasted too. Thomas Jane, Sterling K. Brown, Olivia Munn, Keegan Michael Key, Yvonne Strahovski amongst others are all there to fill up the screen but get nothing interesting to do. Jake Busey turns up early in the film with the same surname as his father Gary had in the second film but does nothing. And Boyd Halbrook in the lead is definitely no Arnie and one scene of him doing something very traumatic in front of his son and then joking about it will leave a bad taste in your mouth.

A few moments will make you smile; the callbacks to the original film that fans will notice peppered around the place are fun but other than those and one well lit lab massacre nothing hits the spot. The ending is left very open for a sequel too but based on this it does not deserve it. It's a real disappointment. Some things are just best left in the past and this franchise needs it's spine ripped out now.