Ahh! The heyday of Arnie's movie career

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2003)

Yep, that's what it felt like when I recently re-watched this on DVD. Those were the days when you didn't need character development and meaningful looks into the camera. You didn't need flowery dialogue or unecessary story exposition. All you needed for a blockbuster was Arnie, and a load of big guns.
I specifically use the term heyday, since it now appears that Big Arnie may well be winding down his film career in favour of a political one. Recent releases like T3 show he can still do the action, but he isn't getting any younger. I'd hate to still see him doing action when he is no longer capable of it. That would bring back too many memories of Chuck Norris........perish the thought!
However, Predator was one of his early greats. No real plot, as such, just a bunch of soldiers with Arnie as their leader, facing off against an alien menace. In those days, you knew that Arnie would survive. Death was not a contract option for him. Spouting his corny (sometimes so corny that you couldn't do anything but cringe as he uttered them, though in a delighted, warm fuzzy feeling way, not a "god that's awful" way) Arnie bulldozed his way through enemies, plot, dialogue coaches teaching et al as he made movie after movie with nothing more complicated at its heart than action, action and yet more action.
Predator was also the first movie that I can remember that, in the tradition of having big guns in Arnie flicks, had a man-portable mini-gun in it. Even more astonishing, or perhaps purposefully done, is the fact that Arnie never uses it. Perhaps the implication behind this was that he doesn't NEED to. He's tough enough without it!
All in all, Predator satisfies the action requirements of any Arnie film. There's not the humour of later films, or Commando, for that matter, but it is still one of his greats.