Depredador

A team of commandos are sent into a central American jungle to extradite US airmen that are being held by terrorists. During the rescue attempt the airmen and the terrorists are killed and the commandos being to return to their pickup location. However as they travel back across the jungle they are picked off one by one by an unseen assassin. With his teams' numbers dwindling, Dutch decides to take a stand.

This ranks as one of Schwarzenegger's best films, mainly because he doesn't ham up the one-liners etc and just plays it straight. The story is pretty straight forward. Once the issue of the airmen rescue is forgotten it is a straight hunt or be hunted affair. The film manages to create a great sense of tension by not revealing the predator until near the end, this means we, like the commandos, are not quite sure what's doing the hunting. If the tension was so good then this could have been a slasher style film with each character being bumped off in a series of gory ways. However McTiernan makes sure that it never feels that basic.

The action is good throughout. But the film benefits from a strong male cast - not great actors but they all fit the parts well. Schwarzenegger isn't wearing his star power on his sleeve like he does in other films and is good here. The rest of the cast are filled out by what could be kindly described as B list stars (except maybe Bill Duke), but Carl Weathers and ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura do well.

Overall this is a B movie creature feature, but it's carried out with such style and aplomb that it's hugely enjoyable throughout.

One of Arnold´s best movies. Here he plays the leader for an elite army-unit who is given a mission to rescue south-american officials from left-wing terrorists in a south-american jungle. On their way to the terrorist compound one of the men sense something in the trees and they discover skinned corpses. What they don´t know is that an invisible alien creature is pursuing them. It has come to earth just to hunt for sport and Arnolds group makes a perfect target. The team reaches the terrorist´s camp and levels it to the ground in a very well filmed action-sequence. However they don´t manage to save the officials. When they return to rendez-vouz with the helicopter they are being hunted of the Predator who picks them off one by one. The Predator is a very well done film which catches you from the start. The location-filming is brilliant and so is the casting of tough characters in Arnolds team. I´m specially fond of Jesse Ventura. The script is un-pretentious and straight told. The monster is a kind of Rambo-Alien. Very awesome and very intelligent with the seven foot Kevin Peter Hall in the monster make-up. As always in Arnold´s films, the action scenes are of highest class. I consider this a winner and ranks it: 7 of 10.

Consider that so many of the roles that Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on are so similar, including Predator, and yet this film is so much better than most of the others. I enjoy watching his movies just because he's such a watch-able guy, even in his bad movies (which are many), but I think the thing that really makes Predator stand out is its simplicity. The movie starts, the guys get dropped in the jungle, lots of blood and carnage flies across the screen, and the movie simply ends. No romance, no complex back story, no soldier struggling with problems in his past or even trauma caused by the horrible things he experiences during the movie. This is one of the things that made First Blood so good. It may turn out to be a movie about a lot of muscle-bound meatheads in the woods, but it doesn't insult the audience or try to apply complexity to a story that can't support it.

Interestingly, the movie features two eventual governors. Jesse Ventura even wrote a book which was released while he was the governor of Minnesota and he used his favorite line in this movie as the title. And the book's actually pretty interesting; there are some funny stories in it about things that went on while they were filming this movie. Arnold, on the other hand, is actually (and thankfully) given a relatively small amount of stupid one-liners, which are an idiotic byproduct of hard action movies that I've never really understood the necessity for. They don't reveal anything about the characters who say them, they don't add to the story or further the plot, and with rare exceptions, they're not funny. But I guess comic relief has to come from somewhere, and since complexity is not a requisite for movies like this, I can't really expect a lot of thought being put into the comedic content either.

I watched Predator having never seen it from beginning to end and having just re-watched the original Alien. I am currently in the process of re-watching both series', for obvious reasons. One thing that I notice about both of them is the way they take their time in introducing the enemies which, in both films, are aliens. Predator doesn't waste much time dwelling on the origin of the alien, we pretty much assume it came from a space ship that flashed across the screen at the opening of the movie. Alien, on the other hand, went into remarkable detail about where its alien came from. What Predator does do, very effectively, I think, is that it has the guys fighting some very human enemies, which allows the movie to later take its sweet time in having them realize that the new enemy is not human at all. This is also, incidentally, weakly rehashed in the sequel, using the secrecy of this mission and team as an excuse to have more guys who don't know what's going on.

The death scenes are actually pretty tasteful, given the genre. They are just gory enough to illustrate the violence of the enemy without being gratuitous. Just enough is shown to show how vicious the alien is, and there are some strange things done to and with the bodies that make you wonder about the alien's intentions or needs. The first deaths suggest vengeance if not some sort of ritual, but later ones suggest that the alien may be feeding off of his (or her) victims. Oddly enough, it is not until the awful Predator 2 that we learn that it kills for sport.

Yes, the movie occasionally gets embarrassingly macho, but the skill with which it is put together far overshadows any tough-guy goofiness. Consider, for example, the ease with which the movie switches from showing the guys hunting the alien to their realization that they are the ones being hunted. In some cases, this transition takes place during a single shot and with virtually no movement in the shot at all except a change in someone's expression. It is truly a fight between a group of predators, which we understand because they are human like us, and a single predator whose powers and weaknesses are unknown. It's not Oscar material, needless to say, but it's a great action movie in part because it already knows that.

31 years after its original release, it's hard to believe that there was once a time when John McTiernan's Predator wasn't revered as one of the best action movies of the modern era. Critics savaged the film, although now even the stuffiest of critics cannot deny its shamelessly muscly, bullet-spraying, blood-spattering charm. Predator is now held in as equally high regard as McTiernan's other action classic Die Hard - released the following year - and featured Arnold Schwarzenegger at the very top of his game. This was long before the Austrian hulk made a swerve into politics and became the self-parody he is today. The premise is almost offensively simple, but the execution makes this one of the most effortlessly enjoyable action movies of the 1980s. McTiernan knows exactly how to tear a jungle apart with gunfire, and set up his disposable supporting characters for a grisly death.

Special Forces major Dutch Schaefer (Schwarzenegger) is "choppahed" into South America, where is he given a mission to rescue an official who has fallen into the hands of some insurgents. Schaefer and his team - played by Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, Sonny Landham, Richard Chaves and Shane Black - are met by Schaefer's old Army buddy Dillon (Carl Weathers), and the two greet each other in the most 80s way possible by flexing their oiled and oversized muscles in a manly handshake. As the team venture further into the jungle, it becomes clear that Dillon isn't telling the whole story, and the mission becomes even more difficult when they capture a female hostage named Anna (Elpidia Carrillo). Yet this is far from their biggest problem, as on their tail is an alien with the ability to camouflage itself and see with thermal imaging, backed by an arsenal of powerful extra-terrestrial gadgets and a healthy appetite for the hunt. With the group being picked off one by one by this formidable enemy, Schaefer must get to the extraction point before he becomes another skull in the beast's growing collection of trophies.

The plot can be compared to countless B-movies throughout the years, but what worked for Alien also works for Predator. Take a simple premise, add some budget, bind it together with some good old-fashioned decent film-making, and the result is a timeless classic. Yes, the special effects have dated and most of the actors' stars have somewhat dimmed in the decades since, but Predator is even more of a blast now than it was when I stole my brother's VHS twenty-odd years ago. The sequels, spin-offs and comic-books have gone to great length to explain and develop the Predator's mythology, but McTiernan simply lets the monster do its thing. Played by the 7 ft 2 in Kevin Peter Hall, the Predator's formidable armour, weaponry, stealth and sheer repulsiveness has made it a sci-fi/horror icon. Like the Alien franchise, subsequent movies have felt the need to explain the creature's backstory, damaging their otherworldly mystery in the process, but Predator simply throws him into the mix and lets him loose on our world's finest warriors. With star Shane Black's reboot The Predator set to arrive shortly, now is the perfect time to revisit what drew audiences to the series in the first place, in spite of how your attitude may have soured after those terrible Alien cross-overs and the forgettable third entry from 2010.

First of all, if you haven't seen this action, suspense and violence extravaganza, you most certainly are not a true action movie afficionado. The immediate grabbing feature of this movie is its score, very imaginatively composed and created by Alan Silvestri whose other credits include the Back to the Future series and other gems like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The tempo and build up which the score lends to the film engage its viewers with feelings of fear and nerve wracking suspense for what lurks within the thick of the forest. Take note of Sonny Landham's comment;"there's something out there,and it ain't no man.

The action is fast, furious and merciless. The commandos are killed off one by one, leaving Arnie, Carl Weathers and the surviving members extremely terrified and on the verge of breaking down. Note the heated arguments that some of the commandos get into with each other. There is very animated and fiery action in the beginning (assault on the terrorist camp) but as we are introduced to the true terror of the jungle (or should I say, outer space), the action takes a turn for the more insane eg.Arnie running away armed only with a knife and trembling in fear, almost drowning in a waterfall and thereafter, continually pursued by the Predator). All this followed by a half hour long jungle battle mano a mano with spears, rocks and fists and hall deafening yells by both warriors. Very, very fierce and macho stuff I assure you all.

I shall not go into the other intricacies of the film and will leave it to the curiosity of potential/virgin viewers to find out for themselves. "Predator" is essentially one of the few action movies that truly lives up to its name and delivers the thrills and spills in no small amount and at breakneck speed. True connoisseurs of hard action.....YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!!!!! 9.5/10