The Predator

The Predator

Starring Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown

Directed by Shane Black

The Story:
While on a mission in Mexico to rescue hostages from a drug cartel, sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) is almost killed when an alien ship crash lands nearby, and he's attacked by an alien that camouflages itself.   He manages to take some of the alien's body armor and sends it home before he's taken in by the government and sent on a bus with other captives to be silenced for what he knows.

Meanwhile, government agent Will Traeger (Sterling K. Brown) is searching for the alien tech, and brings in evolutionary biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) to inspect the captured Predator.  Before they can investigate, the Predator escapes and they find themselves under attack from another Predator ship, where a bigger, meaner Predator is hunting down the other Predator.  Quinn discovers that his autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay) has the Predator tech, and he rushes home to protect his son and somehow stop the Predators.

The Synopsis:
The "Predator" franchise is an interesting one to say the least - the best thing you can say about any of them is that they're campy fun.  Arnold Schwarzenegger totally killed it in the first "Predator" movie, especially spouting the now iconic line: "Get to the chopper" (which director Shane Black paid honor to in this film), but every subsequent sequel (and mashup, such as those dreaded "Alien vs. Predator" films) failed to achieve the same level of success.  There were high hopes that "The Predator," directed by Black (who also appeared in the first film), would somehow re-ignite that same magic, but ultimately it just became another unnecessary sequel that could've offered something new, but instead relied on tired quips and one-liners mixed with glorious gore.

While Black does send the audience back to the campy 80s action genre, he failed to really deliver any important story.  Instead, there's bits and pieces to an actual story that he seemingly wanted to tell, but instead settled on more violence and cheesy one-liners, the former which was very welcomed, but the latter not so much.  Seeing the Predator totally tear up his victims in such brutal fashion is what they're known for best, and that's the only big redeeming quality of the film.

While there wasn't anything absolutely terrible about the film (save for the Predator hounds, which are just as bad as the Hulk hounds from that awful Ang Lee abomination), there wasn't anything stellar about it either.  There could've been a story there about Predators becoming bigger, stronger, and faster - but that idea was merely a sub-subpoint to the story at hand.  Instead, it seemed Black threw in jokes at the expense of suffering soldiers and young children with autism than anything else.

We get a sort of reason why the Predators came back to Earth, but it's hardly a worldwide terror threat level - in fact, we hardly see any military whatsoever going after them, but instead a gang of soldiers who suffer from different psychoses go after these alien creatures.  Again, there didn't seem to be much of an actual story here, but instead just a justification for more gore and violence.

Boyd Holbrook will probably never be the next action hero, and he barely makes a blimp on the screen as the film's major hero.  He basically serves as wallpaper to better actors, who just exists to play the tired and tedious trope of the army guy who needs to save his young son who he never seemingly talks to at any cost.  Jacob Tremblay steps out from his dramatic performances in films like "Room" and "Wonder" and tackles a more action role as McKenna's son, who has autism.  It's this autism that somehow serves as the main focus of whatever plot there is, and ultimately it doesn't make a lot of sense.  Olivia Munn is weirdly cast as Dr. Casey Bracket, who goes from literally shooting herself in the foot with a dart to expertly using military-grade weaponry, and Sterling K. Brown is the sole light as the villainous, cocky government agent bent on finding the Predator technology for some reason.

As for the soldiers, they have more personality and likability than Holbrook's character's pinky finger.  Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, and especially Thomas Jane eat up whatever scenes they're in, and even though their humor gets old after awhile, at least they're given more character development than other characters we know are simply just bodies for the Predator to destroy.

The film moves at a slightly sluggish pace, especially since there didn't seem to be a clear direction they wanted to go in.  A Predator arrives on Earth, presumably to help humanity, but ends up killing a lot of people before the bigger, badder Predator arrives to stop him.  Other than that, there's subplots involving the Predators adapting, a possible Predator-human hybrid, and the importance of autism in the world, but again, none of them are really developed, as neither is the main story as well.

The last twenty minutes or so feel so completely haphazardly put together you wonder if Shane Black just ran out of time to finish the story.  It's incredibly rushed and poorly edited, with major deaths occurring in seconds without a second thought - in fact, I literally looked away from the screen for a second and when I looked back, apparently a major character died.  While the film left itself open for a sequel, I doubt we'll see the Predators take flight on the big screen again.

The Summary:
While it does boast the campy fun of an 80s action movie, "The Predator" is bogged down by a lackluster plot, boring lead hero, and a rushed, poorly edited ending - but ultimately, we go to these films to see the gore, and that's where Shane Black fully delivers.

The Score: B