Perfect Entertainment

Rating: 10/10 (10 July 2016)

Continuing my plan to watch every Arnie movie in order, I come to his first multi million dollar pay day ($3,000,000) in Predator.
Plot In A Laragraph: A special team of commandos on a mission in a Central American jungle are hunted by an extra terrestrial killer.
Predator is quite simply one of the best action movies ever made. End of.
It starts off like "Rambo" and ends up like "Aliens". It even has shades of "Jaws" thrown in, as the Predator is not actually shown on screen for about an hour, we see everything from then through it's eyes.
The likable cast is headed by Arnie with steady support from Carl Weathers, Shane Black, Billy Duke, Sonny Ladham and Jesse Ventura.
All the lead characters seem nice people to hang out and have a beer with, and an even better bunch of guys to go in to battle with. As they kick some serious ass in the first 30 minutes. I can't praise the cast enough of this movie enough here, as they all do an excellent job. Some of the cast were never as good before this movie, and never were again.
Black is quite good in one of his rare spells in front of the camera, Ventura does what Ventura does,Ladham is effective as Billy and Weathers gives his best performance outside of the Rocky franchise, Although when he tells Arnie he is "Expendable" I couldn't help but think, if only those movies were as good as this.
As for Arnie, who has contributed some tough fisted, hard as nails characters over the years. He'll never be a good dramatic actor, but he is a great action star and he has charisma in spades!! He is perfectly cast here. Behind "Terminator 2" this is his best movie ahead of True Lies.
The score is another valuable asset to the movie, it's perfect.
In his autobiography Total Recall, Arnie talks about how along with producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver he picked John McTiernan to direct (even though he only had one movie to his name) and when (following the success of this and Die Hard) they couldn't afford to hire him to direct the sequel, and he read the scrip (which Silver wouldn't change) he walked away from the franchise, and never worked with Silver again. He mentions Van Danme (the original Predator being a "relentless complainer" and calls the full experience "an ordeal"
Finishing the year, the 12th highest grossing movie of 1987, With a $59 million gross, Predator was a career high for Arnie, and his first movie to break the $50 million barrier at the domestic Box Office.
To sum it up Predator is a highly professional piece of work, swift and suspenseful, with a good sense of pace and atmosphere it makes for perfect entertainment.