The Predator Review

THE PREDATOR

Film Review by FIORE

It was so close.  During the first hour and ten minutes of THE PREDATOR, I thought Director Shane Black returned the franchise to its original excellence.  PREDATOR, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jessie Ventura, Bill Duke, Sony Latham and Carl Weathers was a FIST OF FIORE AWARD winner, exemplifying excellence in film entertainment.  PREDATOR 2, numerous AVP flicks, and PREDATORS, with Adrian Brody attempted to recapture that glory, but failed dismally.  I actually thought Black did it.   

THE PREDATOR opens with a great scene; Predator ships traveling through a space wormhole, landing on Earth, disrupting a special ops sniper attack on a cartel drug lord.  The SFX are good, the action sequences are good, and the film takes off on an adventure, soon destroyed by what seems to me, to be a very big mouse.

Boyd Holbrook is Quinn McKenna, a special ops sniper, assigned to eliminate a cartel drug lord. During the operation, a Predator ship crashes, interfering with the assassination.  McKenna’s team is attacked and killed by the Predator in a most gruesome manner.  McKenna escapes with the alien’s helmet and arm gauntlet. 

 

Quickly, the government enters the picture, headed by Traeger, played by Sterling K. Brown, who also appeared in the most excellent HOTEL ARTEMIS (FOF) earlier this year.  He is obsessed with acquiring Predator technology, and eliminating anyone wise to the alien’s visit to Earth.  Pressed into service to help his cause is Dr. Casey Bracket, played by Olivia Munn.  She is there, primarily to provide an outlet for Hollywood’s Woman Warrior Agenda. 

 

McKenna realizes he has gold with the Predator armament, so he forwards it to his home, where he has an autistic son, Rory, played by Jacob Tremblay who is an idiot savant with technology, and soon learns to operate the weapons.  This enables him to stop the lads bullying him in school, and turns both the government and the Predator onto his location.  McKenna now must race to save his family from both entities.  He has, however, been placed in an asylum with a group of burnt out soldiers, who soon opt to help McKenna with his quest. 

While Keegan Michael Key (another three name), as Coyle,  is notable in the group of loonies, the true standout is Thomas Jane.  His performance as Baxley, an ex-mercenary with Tourette’s syndrome, is great, worthy of Best Supporting Actor considerations.

During filming, Olivia trolled a few of the crew, and discovered one was a registered sex offender.  She did an end run past Black, and complained directly to Fox studio executives.  The crewman quickly left the production, but then Olivia grumbled when the other male members of the cast declined to appear with her on the talk show circuit.  She became toxic, and not surprisingly, none of the males wanted to be in the company of a woman with an schema.  Can’t say I blame them.

The set up is followed by two solid action sequences, at the football stadium and the middle school.  There is a nod to John Carpenter, as events unfold on Halloween.  At this point, THE PREDATOR was well on its way to earning The Fist, but then, it became Disneyized.

First, the agendas come, then the film turns cartoonish.  Traeger explains the Predators are coming to Earth more frequently because of… wait for it… global warming!  Really?  This Al Gore myth, designed solely to implement a carbon tax for the government, is now relegated to schlock-C horror flicks seen at 2am.  No one takes this nonsense serious anymore, and to tie it to the Predator show a lack of imagination in scriptwriting.

Next comes the dog.   One of the Predator’s attack dogs is shot in the head, and suddenly becomes a pet to Rory and Dr. Bracket.  With a dog and a little outcast kid, THE PREDATOR is like a Stephen Spielberg movie, but it turns shoddier.

The final reels are so cartoonish and out of pace with the Predator legacy, it seems as if they were written by some hack screenwriter from Disney.  Actually, Black penned the script along with Fred Dekker.  The Mouse, by the way does now own all properties of Fox Studios, including Predator and Alien.  The conclusion of THE PREDATOR sets up a Disney adventure which will follow all of the Mouse’s socialist, progressive agendas, featuring a kid, a dog and his dysfunctional family, and a dad who must save the world.  It’s enough to make this critic wretch in the aisle.  First they destroyed STAR WARS, then MARVEL.  Is there no stopping the Disney Big Brother Platform?

The first hour was momentous.  Unfortunately, the film is two hours long.  How did this near epic go so wrong?  Did Disney really influence the second half of the film?  Did Black simply sell out, knowing Disney was coming on board?  Whatever the reason, THE PREDATOR turned from epic to comic with the change of a reel.  By the time the protagonists begin riding on the outside of the Predator ship, the film is lost.