PREDATOR 2: No Stopping What Can’t Be Stopped, No Killing What Can’t Be Killed

Predator 2 (1990) – Directed by Stephen Hopkins – Starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Ruben Blades, María Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton, Robert Davi, Kevin Peter Hall, and Adam Baldwin.

PREDATOR 2 may just well be the most poorly conceived and executed sequel of the last three decades.

The largest problem with the film is that it can’t commit to the idea that the Predator isn’t a villain, and it doesn’t have enough brains to artfully work at the theme of moral complexity. The result is that we get the Predator slaughtering drug pushers, yet being tracked by our hero cop, Danny Glover. Are we supposed to root against the Predator when he’s killing hardcore killers and drug lords, and hanging the upside down? Because I’m totally rooting for him through the first part of the movie. Even when his actions are re-contextualized as “evil,” when he kills Glover’s partner, Danny Archuleta (Ruben Blades), that’s not enough for me to root against him – Archuleta was trespassing on the Predator’s turf, after all.

When Lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Glover) goes all predator on the Predator (Kevin Peter Hall), and I’m conflicted. I like Harrigan, and I can understand his wanting revenge, but I like the Predator, too. (Even if in this movie he’s really more Punisher than Predator.) My emotional commitment is further conflicted by the presence of federal agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey), who’s a typical federal agent douchebag. In the same scene, then, I’m rooting for the Predator to take out Busey as I’m conflicted over the Predator/Glover fight.

There’s a real solid pot of conflicted morality here, but the film is too stupid to do anything with it.

Taking the film series out of the jungle, PREDATOR 2 takes the alien hunter persona and drops him into future, borderline post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. I’m not really sure if PREDATOR 2 is more properly called the worst Predator movie or the worst Lethal Weapon movie, but it’s a film that just isn’t very good. It’s main problem is that it oversells it’s attitude – Harrigan is too much the hothead cop, the violence is too cartoonishly executed, and Detective Jerry Lambert (Bill Paxton) is, well, too much a Bill Paxton character from the ’80s.

Taking the Predator to the city isn’t, in and of itself, a bad idea, but it’s not executed very well, at all, as the filmmakers decide to push this film into the near future by setting it in 1997. They seem to want a war zone in Los Angeles so they can use a gang war as an excuse to have lots of minorities kill each other with lots of blood and bullets.

The opening sequence is simply preposterous. In the director commentary track on PREDATOR, John McTiernan talks about a scene in the jungle where Dutch’s group fires all of their ammo at where they think the Predator has gone. They decimate the forest, but don’t kill the Predator, and McTiernan relates that this scene was his way of silently protesting the fact that he’d been hired to make a film that revels in violence as pornography. The payoff for McTiernan is that all that gunfire kills nothing more than vegetation. It’s a wonderful nod to the shortcomings of guns, which is that you can’t kill what you can’t hit.

There’s none of that cleverness in PREDATOR 2, and the opening sequence of gang violence is a horrid welcome into this movie. It’s just a seemingly endless series of people firing semi-automatics just to show gunfire. After this, we’ve got to endure a whole bunch of formulaic “good cop who doesn’t play by the rules and thus gets called on the carpet” nonsense. In short order, we watch Ruben Blades and Bill Paxton get killed, and Maria Conchita Alonso get injured. Glover then runs into the feds, where Gary Busey gets killed.

Danny Glover gives the role everything he can and it’s everything the role asks for and more. Unfortunately, that’s not always a good thing as he (and the film) go overboard a few too many times.

PREDATOR 2 never creates a real threat for the Predator. Yeah, Harrigan kills him, but it’s an opportunistic kill instead of a battle of smarts and so it falls flat to me.

I do like what happens after the kill, when a group of Predators reveal themselves to Harrigan so they can take the body of their fallen comrade away. One of them tosses Harrigan an old 18th century firearm, which confirms for Harrigan (even though Gary Busey just told him this) that the Predators have been here before and will be here again.

It’ll just take a while for them to be back in their own movie.

PREDATOR: El Diablo Que Hace Trofeos de Los Hombres

Predator (1987) – Directed by John McTiernan – Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Richard Chaves, Sonny Landham, Shane Black, Bill Duke, Jesse Ventura, Kevin Peter Hall, and Peter Cullen.

I really wanted to call this review Dillon and the Alien Hunting Machine. or Dillon and the Bungle in the Jungle.

PREDATOR is my favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and not because it stars two future governors, a former porn star, Apollo Creed, Harry (from Harry and the Hendersons), the guy who directed Sister Act 2, the guy currently directing Iron Man 3, and Optimus Prime.

No, PREDATOR is my favorite Schwarzenegger film because it sits in the perfect place between Schwarzenegger the actor and Schwarzenegger the star, and the film is the perfect mix of story and action. He’s still learning how to act here, not in a place where he thinks he knows what he’s doing, and the film neither relies too much on him nor caters to him. Director John McTiernan does an excellent job using Schwarzenegger in this film, pairing him with other serious dudes. These are big guys in the film and Schwarzenegger ends up looking better because he’s one of the guys and not THE guy.

When you take serious guys and put them on a serious mission, it makes the threat all the more effective. There is a bit of over-exaggerated fear in them when they begin to realize they’re up against something even more serious than them, but it doesn’t detract too much from the film.

PREDATOR is really an excellent example of minimalist storytelling. Dutch (Schwarzenegger) and his team of commandos are tricked by Dillon (Carl Weathers) into going on what they think is a rescue mission. When they get behind enemy lines and hit the compound where the hostages are allegedly being held, they realize Dillon lied to them. And then the rest of the movie is them fighting the Predator, who they can’t see, can’t understand, and can’t kill until after he’s taken all of them out but Dutch.

Smartly divided into three acts, PREDATOR concisely walks us through the raid, the group being taken out by the Predator, and finally the Arnold vs. Predator showdown. McTiernan smartly uses the heat and claustrophobic nature of the jungle to raise tension and even though none of these characters beyond Dutch and Dillon have a lot to do, PREDATOR does a fantastic job making me feel like Dutch’s crew has been working together for years.

And yes, there’s a bit of Skittles casting here: we’ve got the Euro, the black guy, the white guy, the American Indian, the Chicano, and the dorky white guy, but I never feel like this crew was put together by central casting.

One of the ways McTiernan accomplishes this is is by focusing on paired relationships. There’s not a lot of time for character development here, of course, but what little time there is, McTiernan uses it very effectively. Rick (Shane Black) tells Billy (Sonny Landham) a few p*ssy jokes, Mac and Blain (Bill Duke and Jesse Ventura) served together prior to joining Dutch’s group, and Dutch and Dillon have a history. In the director’s commentary, McTiernan mentions how he really wanted to cast Weathers opposite Schwarzenegger because Weathers could stand toe-to-toe with Arnold. You don’t hear a lot of people giving Weathers credit for his acting chops, but McTiernan heaps a lot of praise on him for his professionalism and notes how the pivotal scene between Dillon and Dutch where Dutch realizes he’s been played works primarily because Weathers carries the scene. The director also gives Arnold plenty of praise for how attentive he was at watching Weathers work.

I enjoy details like that in director commentaries because it shows how much an industry guy like McTiernan appreciates what Weathers can do for a film, and how much a still-relatively-new-to-acting Schwarzenegger appreciates what Weathers can teach him.

Another reason why PREDATOR is my favorite Schwarzenegger film is that the one-liners are delivered with sufficient pathos in order to highlight the grimness of the situation, not to afford the audience a chance to laugh in their popcorn. When Blain is told he’s been hit and grunts back, “I ain’t got time to bleed,” the effect is to let you know that he’s a tough guy in an incredibly tough spot. When Dutch is told the Predator has bled after one encounter, he remarks, “If it bleeds we can kill it,” signifying a ray of hope for the group. And when Dutch finally sees the Predator’s true face and remarks, “You’re one ugly motherf*cker” it’s a sign that the true horror of what he’s been facing is finally driven home.

I can’t leave out Elpidia Carrillo’s Anna, either, as she plays scared just about as well as anyone. She’s a constant reminder, amid all the machismo, that Dutch’s crew really has no idea what they’re up against. It’s fitting that she’s the one person who survives who isn’t played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the film rewards her proper fear and respect for the Predator (and the sacrifice of Dutch’s men) by allowing her to keep her life.

When Dutch finally asks her to tell him what she knows, she calls the Predator, “el diablo que hace trofeos de los hombres,” which she translates for us as “the demon which makes trophies of man.” As the Predator series developed, the character became characters and they lost both the mystery and the power of their initial appearance. If for some reason you only know the Predator from its more heroic appearances in the Alien vs. Predator films, do yourself a favor and hunt (Shalit!) PREDATOR down – it’s the best film of Arnold’s career and one the best action movies we have.

DEATH RACE 3: INFERNO: Anyone Can Be Frankenstein

Death Race 3 (2013) – Directed by Roel Reine – Starring Luke Goss, Danny Trejo, Ving Rhames, Dougray Scott, Tanit Phoenix, Robin Shou, and Fred Koehler.

DEATH RACE just might be the best B+ movie franchise going right now.

DEATH RACE 3 is a sequel to DEATH RACE 2 and a prequel to DEATH RACE and it is, once again, a surprisingly good movie. I should probably stop saying that but while there’s the usual sequel degradation here (DR3 isn’t as good as DR2, which isn’t as good as DR1), the slippage is never as deep as I fear it will be, and I always end up liking these movies quite a bit.

There’s a bit of a blip here at the beginning that doesn’t work well with the end of DR2. We saw Carl “Luke” Lucas (Luke Goss) “die” near the end of that film and the birth of Frankenstein. There was a clear implication that Lists (Fred Koehler) and Katrina (Tanit Phoenix) highly suspected that Frankenstein was Lucas, but at the start of DR3, Frankenstein is being a total dick and Lists, Katrina, and Goldberg (Danny Trejo) now apparently think it’s not Luke in the suit.

Ving Rhames makes an appearance to sell Death Race to Dougray Scott, who takes Frankenstein and 14K (Robin Shou) to Africa to internationalize Death Race. It’s a great idea, both internally and externally. There’s really no reason they can’t make 3 or 6 or 20 more Death Race movies using this model, rotating a never-ending series of cars, racers, and Frankensteins. It’s very admirable that Universal and its partners have stepped up to make a quality film. There’s no actor here that’s going to break the budget, but Luke Goss is perfectly fine as a poor man’s Jason Statham, and the inclusion of actors like Trejo, Rhames, and Scott show the producers know how to balance star quality and acting talent. Toss in the returning Koehler and Phoenix, and DR3 just feels like a quality movie more than a simple franchise cash and grab.

I can’t stress enough how much that matters – by the time you hit a third movie, you’re not likely to market the film to new fans; it’s the fans that have been around that serves as your financial bread and butter and DR3 hits all the right notes for fans of the series. It’s a simple enough story, too, so it’s accessible to new fans, as well.

There’s a plot here but it’s a plot we know well by now. Evil corporate prison people hold a Death Race and take an interest in Frank. Cars blow up. People die. There are lots of explosions. There are some down moments – there’s too much time spent to Luke’s crew being mad at him for not revealing his secret to them, and there’s some really bad exchanges between Luke and Katrina over there romantic entanglements (it just reads wrong when hardened criminal Katrina breaks down in tears at the idea that her hardened criminal not-even-boyfriend slept with another woman), but all of these dings are salvaged in a really strong 10 minutes where DR3 pulls the “here’s what you didn’t see” move. What’s impressive is that in this compressed time we get a whole new way to look at the movie, which rewards you for paying attention, something a movie like DR3 doesn’t really need to do.

Director Roel Reine is back for his second DR film in a row and he does a better job this time around. Overall, the film isn’t as strong, but it’s the best ending of the entire series. Evil media guy Niles York (Scott) gets his comeuppance when Luke successfully pulls off a scam that has York end up burned and mistaken for Luke, thus becoming the new Frankenstein.

If you’ve liked the first two DEATH RACE films, there’s no reason you won’t like the latest installment. Here’s hoping it’s not the last we’ve seen of this franchise.