"Alien" on Earth?

Rating: 9/10 (29 October 2002)

A group of commandos is sent into the South-American jungle on a rescue mission. Soon they find themselves picked off one by one by a sadistic alien creature.
Putting the film in the context of the time, it is pretty obvious what it was trying to be: a fusion of Alien and Aliens, swapping out Sigourney Weaver and space for a dense jungle and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Subtlety then, was not viewed as an essential ingredient.
Notwithstanding a stupid title and a "cast" consisting mainly of overambitious bodybuilders, this is a success in more ways than it had any right to be, and in hindsight we can credit one person: director John McTiernan. The man who later reinvented the action blockbuster with Die Hard made the best of a very surreal assignment, and turned it on its head.
You might not expect Arnold to deliver more than a substandard effort going in. You'd be wrong: the Austrian Oak is at his most primal and, interestingly, in the last fourth of the film, at his most human and mortal. You might expect to have trouble believing any space critter could be a match for him. You'd be wrong again: the monster is one of the finest sci-fi antagonists ever created, a fascinating counterpart to Giger's Alien, and just as mysterious. It comes with an impressive bag of tricks, a malevolent intelligence, and a messed-up sense of humor.
Time has been less kind to Predator than to Alien, by association with Schwarzenegger and because of certain stylistic choices. There may not be any neon lights or fog machines in sight, but this is almost as 80s as you can get, in all the right and wrong ways. The biceps and dialogue on display clearly hark back to a different era of cinema, one that, on strength of Predator's many pleasures - be they guilty or pure - you would be right to miss.
If you can make yourself overlook these elements, this is the finest that decade's mad brand of action has to offer. Arnie's showdown with the creature is a triumph - one in which he for the first time shows real and justifiable fear - the deaths in the unit are grizzly and surprising, and a mini gun-assisted deforestation can, once seen, never be forgotten.
Best enjoyed in a group.