Pure action bliss.

Rating: 10/10 (15 July 2009)

The year before he turned Bruce Willis into a bona fide movie star with his hugely successful and highly influential hit Die Hard, director John McTiernan gave Arnold Schwarzeneggar's film career a huge boost with sci-fi flavoured blockbuster Predator, an explosive, testosterone fuelled piece of gung-ho action packed with extreme violence, macho posturing, memorable dialogue, cool one-liners, big guns, and even bigger muscles.
In what is arguably his finest film, the Austrian bodybuilder plays Dutch, leader of a group of highly trained commandos who specialise in rescuing hostages. After the team are duped by shady CIA agent Dillon (Carl Weathers) into taking part in a seek and destroy mission in a Central American jungle, they find themselves being stalked by an unseen enemy: an extraterrestrial hunter visiting Earth with the intention of adding a few more human skulls to his trophy cabinet.
Aided by a high-tech cloaking device, heat vision, and a shoulder mounted laser cannon, the creature kills the men one-by-one, until only Dutch is left standing, and the scene is set for an unforgettable final showdown.
With taut, no-nonsense direction from McTiernan (hard to believe this is the same guy who gave us the abysmal Rollerball remake), a rousing score from Alan Silvestri that perfectly complements the breath-taking action, and amazing visual effects that are way ahead of their time, Predator is a blast from start to finish (quite literally!).
The film also benefits immensely from the cool-as-f@%k cast who play Dutch's impossibly tough team (which includes director Bill Duke, ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura, screenwriter Shane Black, and Native American Sonny Landham), the gratuitous glorification of high-powered weaponry (let's hear it for the mini-gun!), plus one of sci-fi cinemas's most memorable monsters, designed by FX genius Stan Winston and played by 7' 2½" tall Kevin Peter Hall (both of whom are sadly no longer with us).
Put simply, as far as action films go, it doesn't get much better than Predator.