This film will make you a god damn sexual Tyrannosaur

Rating: 9/10 (2 September 2007)

There's a trailer doing the rounds on youtube at the moment for Alien versus Predator 2: Requiem that looks set to readdress everything that went wrong with the Paul W. Anderson directed first installment. Relentlessly gory and violent, it features exploding heads, children under attack from face huggers, a man's nose being burnt off by acid and absolutely masses of blood, guts and bad language. Aside from bringing worry to every puritan mother who lets their kids browse the web unattended, it also shows that with this new movie, a different approach has been taken. For one thing, the producers aren't throwing ideas across the board room table about how to update it for a new audience by making it suitable for children. It also seems as though the director has bothered to watch the originals before he set about making it. In short, it's just the sort of promotional material that gets anticipation building and is precisely why now is the right time to go back and watch Predator, the muscle bound and ridiculously violent rumble in the jungle that became one of the most loved action films of the 1980s.
Considering that the film sees an elite commando team being hunted down and killed off one at a time by a ferocious alien monster, Predator's lineage is quite blatantly obvious. It's almost a missing link between the two Alien movies; blending the stalk and slash monster mash of the first with the Vietnam era machismo of the second. However, it also has enough individuality to stand on its own two legs, thanks to the appearance of two iconic individuals.
First and foremost of these is Arnie. Good old reliable Arnie, doing what he does best; playing a really big guy with lots of guns who specialises in killing people. Dutch Schaeffer isn't a big step up from any of his other characters from the era: he has no convoluted back-story, no dark secrets in his past, but he is a professional and the absolute best of the best. How do we know this? Because Carl Weathers says so. And then he shoots a bunch of people. He's ably matched against the other icon: the Predator itself. Taking on a more humanoid form than the xenomorphs of Alien, the Hunter is a formidable presence. It stands at seven feet tall, dresses like a cross between a bodybuilding Samurai and a bondage model and its favourite hobbies include ripping the skin from its victims bodies and collecting skulls as trophies. Hell, it's so bad ass that it seems like the only opponent Arnie has ever faced that could conceivably kick the living daylights out of him. Not even the Devil managed that.
They're backed up by a colourful cast of supporting characters, among them Carl Weathers, Sonny Landham and Jesse 'The Body' Ventura. Each is unrestrained machismo taken up to boiling point, especially Ventura, who spends most of the film striding around with a ludicrously big gun in his hands, chewing tobacco and reeling off swear words. Best of the bunch though is the character actor Bill Duke as Mac; the imposing man mountain driven mad by the heat and the violence.
But there's a third hand at work in the proceedings who isn't so immediately visible: director John McTiernan, his generation's answer to Michael Bay. Considering this was only his second directing credit, he handles the project with remarkable skill. The explosive battle with the guerrillas is a barnstormer of the highest calibre, McTiernan filling the screen with massive explosions and a ludicrous body count. With that out of the way, he changes gears and the whole film shifts naturally into a chase through Central America. He may have a reputation for being most at home with chaotic gun battles, but the second half of the film is remarkably tense. As the commandos are pursued by a foe they cannot see, their bid for survival is packed with suspense.
No surprise then that this film is so loved. It's ridiculously silly in every aspect. The men are so macho they're barely a step away from appearing in a gay bar's cabaret act. The violence is so outlandish that shooting people isn't enough, half the time they have to be on fire as well. And the guns are so big that in real life, some can only be used if mounted on the side of helicopters. It may be the Friday night beer and violence flick of choice, but it packs more iconic characters, quotable dialogue and downright cool sequences into it's 107 minute running time than Van Damme managed in his entire career. It's even got a few nods to the ambiguities of the Vietcong apparent in the unseen, alien enemy for cultural studies students to get their teeth into. The second round with the Aliens is due at the end of the year, but my money's on this guy.