3.5 stars. Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and vulgar sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.14.18
Revived sci-fi action franchises have done pretty well lately.
Chris Pratt and a fresh team breathed welcome new life into the Jurassic Park series, and now director/co-scripter Shane Black has done the same with an updated Predator. He and co-writer Fred Dekker acknowledge the 1987 original, while cleverly welding their story to a can’t-miss formula that hearkens back to 1967’s The Dirty Dozen.
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| When a captured Predator regains consciousness and realizes that it's about to become a laboratory experiment, it reacts with understandable fury. (Unfortunately, our heroes won't get their act together for several more scenes.) |
The result is 107 minutes of skillfully paced suspense, divided into distinct “chapters” that involve audience-pleasing characters, all played well by an ensemble cast that blends familiar faces with several newcomers. The dialogue is sharp, the action frequently laden with droll banter: no surprise, coming from the guy (Black) who made his mark with 1987’s Lethal Weapon and, more recently, ensured that Iron Man 3 was far better than its sophomore-slump predecessor.
Too bad Black undercuts all this good stuff by making his new Predator so unrelentingly gory.
We’re talking splatter-porn levels of abattoir grue more appropriate to trashy zombie flicks. Black signals such sensitivities right out of the gate, when an early human victim — suspended upside-down from a tall tree limb, as befits Predator custom — is sliced in half, after which the camera lingers needlessly on his entrails, as they slowly drip and slide to the ground below.
Seriously?
That’s merely the beginning. Black and Dekker gleefully succumb to all manner of slicing, dicing, severed limbs, eviscerations, disembowelments, decapitations and more, often depicted via grody-to-the-max close-ups. I fully appreciate that a Predator entry must be violent, but there’s such a thing as too much … particularly when such excess damages an otherwise shrewdly assembled thrill ride.
That aside, there’s no denying that Black hits the sweet spot that blends macabre humor, fast-paced thrills and edge-of-the-seat suspense.
The film opens with a space battle between two small fighters; the targeted ship escapes and crash-lands on Earth, right where retired Special Forces army ranger-turned-mercenary Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) is leading a clandestine op against some Mexican drug cartel baddies. He alone survives the subsequent assault by the ferocious whatzit that emerges from the craft; better yet, McKenna escapes with the alien’s helmet and weapon-laden armband.
Suspecting a potentially hostile de-briefing back in the States, McKenna ships the alien tech home, where it unintentionally winds up in the hands of his adolescent son, Rory (Jacob Tremblay, well remembered from Room). He’s a spectrum child, on the border of autistic, and also — thanks to Tremblay’s gifted performance — one of the film’s strongest assets.
Due to Rory’s insatiable curiosity and savant-like talent for pattern recognition and puzzle-solving, he begins to figure out how this strange stuff functions.
Meanwhile, McKenna has indeed run afoul of “plausible deniability” protocols established by Project Stargazer, a high-tech, top-secret government lab established three decades ago, in the wake of the first Predator incursion. Unfortunately, what began as a defense agency and biological think tank has been subverted by Traeger (Sterling K. Brown), a ruthless CIA wonk determined to weaponize and monetize all research.
McKenna quickly gets shackled alongside a busload of psychologically shattered military misfits destined for some lost-in-the-shuffle mental institution. His companions are indeed a motley crew: Williams (Trevante Rhodes), an Air Force Special Forces sergeant who tried to kill himself; Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key), who masks PTSD jitters by telling filthy jokes; Baxley (Thomas Jane), who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome; Nettles (Augusto Aguilera), a crack pilot grounded by a traumatic brain injury; and Lynch (Alfie Allen), whose calm demeanor masks … something.
Back at Stargazer HQ, Traeger has enlisted the assistance of university evolutionary biologist Dr. Casey Brackett (Olivia Munn), to better study the injured creature recovered from the Mexican crash. It’s a Predator, of course, and before one of the expendable lab techs can finish the clichéd reassurance — “Don’t worry; it’s drugged” — all hell breaks loose.
Needless to say, the rapidly expanding chaos quickly envelops both Brackett and the busload of McKenna’s “dirty half-dozen,” who haven’t yet made it beyond the Stargazer gates.
No doubt Black and Dekker feel no need to explain or apologize for the coincidences and contrivances that fuel the subsequent action, and that’s all right; we expect as much. But continuity and blatant manipulation are another matter entirely; the subsequent encounters, skirmishes, hair’s-breath escapes and well-choreographed melees succeed more due to momentum than logic. Most strikingly, a third-act “reveal” completely violates what went down earlier, in the first act.
It’s also hard to clock Traeger’s ever-shifting mission statement. First he wants Brackett’s help; then he wants her executed, for “knowing too much.” But he didn’t want McKenna similarly executed. Until he does, a bit later. Brown’s over-the-top megalomania is a hoot — he makes a great villain — but golly, man; make up your mind!
And boy, I’d love to know where an unassuming scientist such as Brackett picked up military-grade weapons, assault and battlefield skills. No insult intended to Munn — she plays the role with bravado, pluck, smarts, sass and considerable gung-ho panache — but couldn’t the script have dropped a hint about Brackett’s former career as a combat Marine, or something similar?
No question, though: Munn steals the show, giving us a kick-ass female action hero on par with Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, in that other nasty-outer-space-critter franchise.
Holbrook holds his own, although McKenna seems bland alongside his far more outrageous new companions. Rhodes adds some pathos, making Williams the group’s cynical philosopher; Jane is hilarious, with Baxley’s badly timed (actually perfectly timed) vulgar outbursts.
A few set-pieces will raise smiles for different reasons. Brackett’s introduction to the self-described “loonies” is an oddly touching, R-rated riff on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, while Rory’s ill-advised decision to wear the alien helmet and armband, as part of a trick-or-treating costume, is right out of E.T.
The production credits are top-notch, and editor Harry B. Miller III keeps things moving at an impressive clip. This Predator may not hold up to post-mortem plot scrutiny, but it definitely delivers during the moment.
And the final scene clearly sets up yet another sequel: not a bad thing, if it’ll be similarly engaging.
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