Review: The Predator
There's a scene in the original 1987 Predator that best encapsulates its enduring appeal: Bill Duke's Mac Elliot glimpsing the titular alien for the first time and unloads. The rest of his elite military team, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Get to the chopper!" Dutch, join him and, without knowing who or what Mac is shooting at, join in and lay waste to practically half of the Central American jungle. It's the kind of over the top, cartoonish, testosteronic ridiculata that's difficult to resist.
No such moment in Shane Black's reboot, The Predator, even comes close to matching the cheeseball glory of the original. For one, it's further proof that bigger isn't always better. For another, it also goes to show that there are times when exposition, character development, and social commentary can be detrimental. The point of the film is to have a group of actors of varying charisma playing mostly expendable characters being sometimes creatively dispatched by an alien. Black piles on the gore, to be sure, but not in any particularly remarkable way and most of the action sequences possess a clumsiness in staging that dilutes their impact.
Where Black's version is more successful is in the flinty, take-the-piss camaraderie shared by his characters. There's ostensive protagonist Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), a former Army Ranger turned mercenary for hire who survives a scuffle with an alien and sends the alien's helmet and wrist gauntlet to his autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay). Up next are the crazy-as-a-fox military rejects Nebraska Williams (Trevante Rhodes), Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key), Baxley (Thomas Jane), Lynch (Alfie Allen), and Nettles (Augusto Aguilera). Quinn and the Loonies find themselves teamed up with evolutionary biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) to track an awakened predator before it finds Rory, who has activated the alien gear that his dad sent him.
The crew's frequently enjoyable rapport aside, Black would have been wiser to focus the film around Rhodes and Sterling K. Brown, who plays government baddie Will Traeger. The latter is nothing less than fantastic - spreading extra relish on lines like "They're large, they're fast, and f**king you up is their idea of tourism." - and all-too-briefly used. Rhodes, who broke out in the highly acclaimed Oscar-winning Moonlight, commands your attention from the jump with his effortless charisma. He and Brown are absolute stars and they combine to make this often strained enterprise feel more enjoyable than it actually is.
The Predator
Directed by: Shane Black
Written by: Fred Dekker, Shane Black; based on characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas
Starring: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Yvonne Strahovski
