This is an old review from a site I used to have called He said, She Said. I had hundreds of reviews on that site. I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into that site and am going to preserve what I can of it. If a review from that site made it's way here, that means it has been updated. Whenever I watch a movie that I already reviewed, I will update it and put it here. All new reviews will still be put on the Facebook page.
There are so many reasons why this movie should be bad; and it is according to critics. First of all, they replaced the biggest action star of the 80's - and arguably of all time - with Danny Glover. With all due respect to Danny Glover, he's not Arnold (in the action department). He was great in Lethal Weapon, but Danny Glover is an actor who has done action movies, not an action star - and a Predator requires a worthy opponent.
Additionally, the element of surprise is completely gone. There is no mystery about who and what this thing is. The great thing about Predator is, in addition to being an excellent action movie, the build up, suspense, and eventual reveal is stellar. It's a very well-made and smart movie which is particularly impressive since it's "just an action flick".
Well the hell with that because this sequel succeeds on all levels.
Danny Glover beefed up for this movie. He was always in good shape, but he's pretty jacked in this movie. He plays hard-ass cop Mike Harrigan to absolute perfection. He's a no-nonsense kind of guy who is dead-set on catching his man. He is a legitimate bad-ass in this movie. He is not a man you want to fuck with. There's this one scene where he grabs Gary Busey's character and slams him against the wall. Hard. It looks so real. You can feel the anger he has towards Busey's character come through the screen. It's an excellent scene and performance.
Gary Busey and Bill Paxton are also well-cast as their usual over-the-top-crazy types. Busey plays a DEA agent who is tracking the alien visitor. He is hunting the hunter if you will. He is fully aware of its existence and intends to catch it. When you think of Gary Busey you don't necessarily think of Predator 2, but he's peak Busey here. I'm honestly not sure if i have ever seen him in a role where he wasn't a little nutty, but if something works, it works. It's a part of who he is as a person and actor. He was in a motorcycle accident in the 80s and it is believed he suffered some brain damage. Tragic for him, but he can play a hell of a crazy person.
Paxton plays a hotshot cop who has recently been transferred to Harrigan's unit. He likes himself A LOT and has a reputation as a renegade who likes to showboat while catching bad guys. He's something of an obnoxious jerk, but isn't a bad person. He genuinely cares about cleaning up the streets despite his braggadocios nature. His death - sorry for the spoilers, but this movie is 32 years old - is epic. Dude goes out like a warrior and a hero.
But what really makes this movie standout for me is the setting and tone. The guys who wrote this - who are a pair of brothers who also wrote the original - must have felt they needed to do something different. They went the exact opposite: they moved the hunt to a city.
And not just a city, but an absolute shit hole dystopian version of one. A concrete jungle, if you will. Simply doing it in a city wasn't enough for them, they made this version of LA a complete and total dump riddled with gangs, murder, and drugs; and that's before the Predator even arrives! #GothamCity is nice compared to this version of LA. In my head, I refer to this movie as Predator 2: Robocop. It's less serious at times - heavy on the satire and social commentary - but still very much a Predator movie. There's blood, violence, and brutal kills, a monster that kills for sport, very manly men, and a plethora of colorful characters.
Without giving too much away, the opening scene is a shootout between the cops and the bad guys. Not your run of the mill shootout either, this neighborhood has been turned into a warzone. One of the baddies snorts a ton of coke before rejoining the battle. It is so absurd and wonderful.
This movie was also unique in the sense that it gives us our first expanded look into the culture of these mysterious alien hunters. We learn more about their motives, honor code, and there's one hell of an Easter egg. Even though I think the fight at the slaughterhouse is a little better, the climax that takes place on the ship is phenomenal for its expanding of the Predator lore and mythology. It was forward-thinking and ahead of its time in that sense. No one else was attemppting this kinda stuff 30 years ago.
Rating: Thumbs up.
This review was written for your reading pleasure on August 13, 2022.
