Amazing action

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2012)

I watched Predator having never seen it from beginning to end and having just re-watched the original Alien. I am currently in the process of re-watching both series', for obvious reasons. One thing that I notice about both of them is the way they take their time in introducing the enemies which, in both films, are aliens. Predator doesn't waste much time dwelling on the origin of the alien, we pretty much assume it came from a space ship that flashed across the screen at the opening of the movie. Alien, on the other hand, went into remarkable detail about where its alien came from. What Predator does do, very effectively, I think, is that it has the guys fighting some very human enemies, which allows the movie to later take its sweet time in having them realize that the new enemy is not human at all. This is also, incidentally, weakly rehashed in the sequel, using the secrecy of this mission and team as an excuse to have more guys who don't know what's going on.
The death scenes are actually pretty tasteful, given the genre. They are just gory enough to illustrate the violence of the enemy without being gratuitous. Just enough is shown to show how vicious the alien is, and there are some strange things done to and with the bodies that make you wonder about the alien's intentions or needs. The first deaths suggest vengeance if not some sort of ritual, but later ones suggest that the alien may be feeding off of his (or her) victims. Oddly enough, it is not until the awful Predator 2 that we learn that it kills for sport.
Yes, the movie occasionally gets embarrassingly macho, but the skill with which it is put together far overshadows any tough-guy goofiness. Consider, for example, the ease with which the movie switches from showing the guys hunting the alien to their realization that they are the ones being hunted. In some cases, this transition takes place during a single shot and with virtually no movement in the shot at all except a change in someone's expression. It is truly a fight between a group of predators, which we understand because they are human like us, and a single predator whose powers and weaknesses are unknown. It's not Oscar material, needless to say, but it's a great action movie in part because it already knows that.