Predator

4/10  - Directed by John McTiernan - 1987 - 107 minutes

Predator, for me, is a glorious symbol of what I might call the the 1980’s Fool's Golden age of action movies, when the theaters were ruled by gritty looking films with hulking men and huge firearms, when an actor could fire off a handful of corny one liners and gain fame that lasted for a decade, when action cinema was shiny, devoid of substance and at its most entertaining. Who else could this blockbuster star than the muscle bound bodybuilder-actor-politician Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger? With his merry team of soldiers and mercenaries, including characters played by Carl Weathers and Bill Duke, Dutch (Schwarzenegger) is tasked to enter a jungle in Central America in search of survivors of a shot down helicopter. As they battle the Soviet funded guerillas operating in the jungle (it was the 80’s, how could the enemies ever be anything but communists?) they soon find that they are being stalked by a brutal killer alien. 

You really do have to appreciate how they pulled out all the stops for this “Predator” alien; cool looking infrared and night vision mask, plasma cannon, invisibility, creepy four toothed hatch opening mouth, and dreadlocks (one of the most inexplicable and almost certainly racist character design choices in all of sci-fi action). Unfortunately, all of these bells and whistles on the monster are the honorable but ultimately unsuccessful efforts of director John McTiernan to keep audiences from realizing that his film has about a third of what a real plot is supposed to be and special effects that would be horrifically outdated in a few years. Predator is a film I would jump to label trash. And yet, that label is distinctly lacking; if Predator is trash, it’s trash in its most entertaining, thrilling, and deranged form. The acting is appalling, the plot is razor thin and I, along with many others, love every second of it. Predator actively eschews all conventions of quality, and yet it delivers in every way I want an action movie from the 80's to; corny jokes, crazy scifi weapons, excessive and comic expressions of macho masculinity, and exciting pyrotechnics. This genre of trashy cinema is decidedly the most satisfying.