Movie Review: The Predator

As you can see from the poster above, The Predator's tagline is "The Hunt Has Evolved". This marketing motto also applies to the on-screen product. For better or worse, co-writer/director Shane Black has brought this classic sci-fi action horror franchise into the modern era with a loud, gory and largely tongue-in-cheek affair that has almost nothing in common with the past installments.

While I can understand the strong fan backlash that has stemmed from the decision to stray away from the series' restrained, claustrophobic roots, I really dug The Predator's desire and commitment to separating itself from the rest of the franchise. The past three films have featured stoic, foul-mouthed hardasses trying to take out this camouflaged alien killing machine in either a jungle or downtown Los Angeles, so why not mix things up by having a group of foul-mouthed, zany quip-spewing hardassess go up against multiple forms of the titular sports hunter in small town USA this time around? Of course with Black captaining the ship, this small-town showdown between man and extraterrestrial piles on the one-liners, gruesome kills and general big-budget action excess as the proceedings zip along at a bullet train-esque pace. Happily embracing the computerized effects, shameless gore and joke-a-minute mentality that have become mainstays in 21st-century pop culture establishes a sense of uniqueness that you don't find very often in the fourth entry of a franchise that has spanned three decades.    

Despite all of its modern sensibilities, the heart of The Predator is still unabashedly rooted in the 80's. The ensemble that's brought together (Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan Michael-Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera) by chance to fight the Predators have a manic rapport that's reminiscent of that era's classic buddy movies and an engaging plot that is low on logic and heavy on absurdity. The frequency in which these type of brainless, self-aware action flicks were released back then is pretty much the only thing I miss about any of Hollywood's bygone eras, so I'm always glad when a modern film successfully captures the spirit of that golden era for fun, mindless shoot-em-up's.

Does all of The Predator work? Of course not. There's a fair amount of jokes that don't land (particularly in the early going) and the final scene features a reveal so batshit crazy that it truly has to be seen to be believed. However, it was ultimately a very entertaining diversion that stood out from its predecessors and in a canon as expansive this, that's all you need to succeed.          

Grade: B+