Good action picture, but it could have been great

Rating: 6/10 (10 May 2007)

It must be said right now: "Predator" is one of the rare good action movies to see the light today. The problem is that it could have been great...
Starring the indestructible Arnold Schwarzenegger, "Predator" is an audacious and inventive movie, doing a great mix of action, science fiction, horror and exotic destinations. And that just before the film's director John McTiernan come up with his masterpiece "Die Hard".
Schwarzenegger plays Dutch, an American military officer dispatched somewhere in Latin America. His crew has to find and rescue a small group of American hostages captured by guerrillas in the jungle. According to Dutch, this mission seems to be only a walk in the park (or in the rain-forest, if you prefer...).
In fact, it is. The guerrillas' camp is quickly knocked down by Dutch and his mates and the Latino soldiers of fortune are all eliminated. But neither Dutch, nor anyone of his colleagues could have predicted what would follow...
In the way of the Xenomorph in "Alien", the soldiers are killed one by one in an horrible and disgusting way by what looks like to be an invisible figure.
The Predator, thus we have to name it, is rather an extra-terrestrial whose 'hunting' outfit contains super-powerful weapons, an ultra-perfected camouflage mode, a mask that looks like those from Polynesian people and a rasta 'hairstyle'... By the way, we get to see its true (and very ugly, should I say it) face at the very end of the movie only, simply to imply that the people who are responsible of the presentation do not twist their thumbs...
The movie "Predator" starts pretty well. The three skinned corpses give a gruesome foretaste of things to come and they are even more convincing than those that we would see four years later in the famous "Silence of the Lambs".
In fact, the soldiers are killed one by one and each one in a different method. So it avoids to give a repetitive mood to the film and it also avoids from giving to the viewer a feeling of non-surprise. On the contrary, horror and gore are always there, victim after victim.
But what really draws the attention, it's the Predator itself. Its creation and its movements required the use of very sophisticated special effects for its era and nothing has been left at random in order to make the creature even more frightening and also more exciting to watch.
What made the movie famous, it's probably the audacious, ingenious and inventive use of the thermal camera. This method strengthens the existing parallel between "Predator" and "Jaws". Not only that the two main 'antagonists' kill their preys one by one, but we never really see them in the first hour. Instead of that, a special viewing point is taken for each of them. In "Jaws", it's the underwater swimmers' legs. In "Predator", it's the thermal camera.
We must not forget the enemy's 'camouflage' either. Remember: the time is 1987. That means: no computers. Because today, recreating the curved mirror-like effect would be a child's play. But in the context of the time where the movie was created, it was a prodigious technique. And even today, it still stuns, even if it became easier.
The greatest adversary of the Predator is also very good. Schwarzenegger is surprising in this film and his stature of former bodybuilder helps him instead of attracting prejudices, because he's not the only character in this movie who has mountains instead of biceps. In fact, I think that it's his best role (after the Terminator, of course).
And to crown everything, the jungle becomes an entity within itself, as in "Platoon", thus fueling the thrills that give the Predator hunt.
Unfortunately, the movie contains massive mistakes. In fact, "Predator" is an almost-perfect film for the first hour, or hour and a quarter. It's when there's only Schwarzenegger left to kill that everything changes. The action scenes, which were previously well-orchestrated and rather realistic, suddenly become laughable and ridiculous. Instead of killing Dutch, the alien doesn't seem to notice that he's there at all (problem of vision?) and when it has the possibility to kill him single-handedly, it doesn't. Why? I imagine that it's because the story has to end well and the hero must survive. Dutch also builds traps in order to kill his enemy. But just by watching his actions, I searched in vain, but I couldn't find the instruction manual in the scenery...
Fortunately that "Predator" has a strong start, because the falling in the final act would certainly have annihilated it. Still, it's a good action picture that is worth seeing.