The first act of The Predator is terrible. It manages to be both rushed and filled with superfluous material, shoving the audience headfirst into an action scene full of references to the previous films without so much as a named character before laying down some obvious foreshadowing with it’s child lead and finally having a scientist whisked away by a secret government organisation that’s been aware of the predator the whole time. It couldn’t be more unlike 1987’s Predator if it tried, until that short, disappointing first act ends. From then on the film is shameless, naked, unabashed action shlock that takes all the individual pieces of the previous films and hurls them with wanton abandon into a sea of one-liners, excessive gore, and endless violence. It’s aware of the ridiculousness and it has a lot of fun with it but pointing out something’s stupid doesn’t make it any less stupid, and Shane Black’s clear ode to the testosterone filled action movies of the ’80s captures extensiveness, but not the spirit.
For starters, the action itself is quite good. Clearly photographed and well blocked, the movements of the Predators are punchy and well weighted, which coupled with the films excellent practical effects results in some exquisitely visceral and visually striking deaths. Bullets are useless for the most part, as they were in the original, though here they are used in some key action scenes to a greatly diminished effect; it’s hard to take the effects of a bullet seriously when you’ve seen thousands of them being about as deadly as trebuchet’d Tic-Tacs. The real problem with the action scenes are the lack of agency and intent, not from the human characters who all have clear and understandable objectives considering their situation, but from the Predators. For the most part, Black takes the hunters completely out of the hunt but retains their regular shtick. They string up people and sledom use their ranged weapons like the good sportsmen they are, but in relation to the film’s plot that approach doesn’t make any sense, and it takes away a lot of what makes them threatening.
The script does a lot in that regard as well. It’s got Black particular brand of quickfire, quip filled humour with a Fred Dekker B-grade twinge to it, and whilst there are stretches where it ranges from great to serviceable there are noticeable low points, especially when it comes to pacing. It’s not so densely constructed that anything important is obfuscated, but there’s very little breathing room given to anything and it results in a constantly refreshing but tonally bankrupt product. There’s not a lick of tension to be found anywhere, and there’s far too much plot and exposition for the film’s own good, with some of the threads being hilariously inept and preposterous. The quality of the acting holds it together and provides a nice distraction as the characters act non too enthralled about the story either. The notable sour point is Jacob Tremblay, who is given poor material and serves to make it infinitely worse with his deadpan reactions, but aside from him everyone else is great. Boyd Holbrook is a great action lead reminiscent of the everyman quality of a young Michael Biehn, Olivia Munn gives a great deal of agency and purpose to her role, and Sterling K. Brown pushes the dialogue to it’s breaking point while delivering a performance that’s full of humour and still building a rounded and believable character, even if he is given a rather unceremonious end. The side characters echo those of 1987’s Predator, being thinly constructed goofy comedy stereotypes as opposed to thinly constructed muscly action stereotypes, and though the jokes wear a bit thin by the end Keegan-Michael, Thomas Jane, and Augusto Aguilera do a great job in making themselves feel necessary and enjoyable enough to want to stay alive.
The Predator feels like the kind of move that Don Dohler or Bruno Mattei would make if given studio backing and a large budget; it echoes all the sentiments and actions of it’s predecessors without presenting any of the context that made them so effective to begin with. The Predators here do Predator things, but without any real reason for doing so, and although I must say I tremendously enjoyed watching the film, it clearly has many issues. This is definitely only for those with a love of action movies or self parody, and even then there are enough strange things that this film does to make you question your feelings for both.
