i ain't got time to bleed

Rating: 9/10 (27 May 2008)

I must congratulate the cast and crew on the fine job they did on Predator. it succeeds and has become such a classic because it observes religiously important and easily overlooked or in-advisably tampered with rules regarding such films; namely, it doesn't require more then a basic and easily digested premise, with, at best, plenty of intriguing and important sounding back-story hinted at through dialogue (which ties in with the slow exposition of the predator); it doesn't rush said exposition of the main villain, especially in the predator's case, defamiliarising the role of the soldiers in the jungle, camouflaged and stalking the prey that earlier on were the ones taking out the central American/Russian/whoevers and trying to rescue some important sounding figures; it whole heartedly enters into the spirit of the situation and the characters, restricting our exposition to their own revelations as they happen, thus involving the viewer more effectively; and finally the cheap humour is timed and executed to perfection, not overkilled - like, say, bill Paxton did in the sequel in trying so embarrassingly to emulate Hawkins - and delivered with panache and offbeat ease, and the special effects, kept to a premium and revealed in glimpses before the glorious conclusion unfolded, is again not overkilled and used brilliantly in minimalism.
this is how to make a good SF thriller. there are flaws, in my opinion, slight ones in plot, and i'll go into them now just to give a sense of perspective; the film is by no means perfect. the predator does a sephiroth, which basically means he is hilariously overpowered, and although that is one of the things that makes him awesome, it also means that his equipment breaks or is discarded out of a warped sense of sport and his complacency and lack of urgency in finishing dutch off leads to his demise, as happens when sephiroth comes to fight cloud. this is all part of the action movie mantra, which must end with a rugged, war-torn and utterly homo-f'ing-sapiens i-just-owned-an-ET-warrior powerful man, Arnie effortlessly breathing the role throughout, surviving beatings that would bring down buildings, a shoulder cannon shot that burned through everything and everyone else it hit in the movie, a damned nuclear bomb and assorted falls and impacts relatively unscathed. he's goddamn dutch Schaefer, that's why. other slight imperfections = the soldiers figure out the predator's game pretty quickly, and are able to predict motivations, why they're being attacked etc. Arnie's forces seemed to discard any worries about the guerrillas swarming the area once it started to dawn on them that an invisible and clearly extra terrestrial warrior was the real nemesis, as well as seeming unconcerned about the chance either guerrilla or said beast would attack them while they built their traps, and the helicopter, which wouldn't cross the border earlier, seemed to have no qualms about doing so once the predator's bomb went off, and with the army chief on board and all.
all of those little niggling plot simplicities and conveniences are merely observations of a pedant. they prevent this film from being perfect, but significantly, it would be less fun if it were more complex, intelligent - from a plot perspective anyway - and plausible. it is still one of the elite SF films, reasons given in the first paragraph. it doesn't look dated now, because the wardrobe and the cinematography, the shot selection - example: the predator shooting at the trees after dutch shoots him with his explosive arrow, showing the whole area, the little predator silhouette with missiles of light firing into the trees, example: Dillon and Mac looking looking at the predator through the trees; the setting helped the shot selection pick itself, anyway, but they nailed it each and every time for a feast for the eyes, after all the carefully and minimally revealed exposition - and the style of filming all lend an atmosphere to a setting that can't age quickly and that remains timeless, effective and immersive even now, and it presents a veritable feast of effective aspects of atmosphere and exposition for the budding film maker to learn from, and the viewer to enjoy.
and besides all that, the predator was fantastic. bizarre and positively alien motivations and intentions, a hunter for the sake of it, elegant, vicious and deadly, with functional and dirty but effective and sleek equipment and an approach to hunting that denoted graft and perverse machismo, and sheer strength as well as fearsome weaponry. he was played masterfully, and the complacency which led to his undoing and the simplicity in which dutch finished him are tolerable when weighed against his awesome strength, brutality and demonstrated power. a great creation, that was not quite represented adequately in the sequel - compensated with the ending on the ship; not like the 2 AvP movies which relied on sheer idiocy, complacency on a less forgivable or believable level on the part of the predator race, as well as implausible and hard to digest back story and illogically pointless enterprises conducted on earth, unlike the hint given at the end of predator 2. comics, games and movies have created a fan-base who have been largely betrayed by overkill exposition and poorly conceived plotting that has ruined and cheapened the mystique constructed in this movie, only really maintained in the sequel, the game AvP 2 and perhaps a handful of comics. it remains a pleasure to indulge in and be awed by that mystique on subsequent viewings of Predator.
it's a visceral, engaging, simple, macho, atmospheric, glorious, intriguing SF thriller about a mysterious alien warrior wreaking havoc in a central American jungle, stalking and butchering an elite unit of American soldiers on a mission, headed by Arnie, a film that presents the optimal SF thriller experience in all facets, that is also cooler then almost anything else you're ever likely to see.
mine's as big as a house! oh baby! havin me some fun tonight!