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Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon
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Go Back To Reviews
Title: THE PREDATOR
Director: Shane Black
Year: 2018
Reviewed: January 07, 2019
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Birthday Cake-Second Highest Rating |
[Rating Definitions]
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SPOILER: I love the original! (No surprise there for those of you who know, and sometimes, love me.) I saw the original "Predator" in a theater in Friday harbor on the San Juan island in the San Juan archipelago. It was 1987. Saw it with two of my friends and two German girls who we had met in Roche Harbor. We warned them constantly that it was going to be violent, and that they should prepare themselves. They assured us they would be fine. By the time Arnold and his band of wacky "rescue team" were doling out death in a jungle village like tokens to children at an eighties video arcade, the German girls had left. And we were left with the visceral beauty of what would become one of my favorite "Arnold" movies.
Now it's 2019. Shane Black, one of the actors from the original cast, decided to "reboot"/"reinvent" the franchise. He is a talented guy. He wrote "Lethal Weapon", and went on to write and direct one of my favorite movies from 2005, the black comedy "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang". His take on the whole team thing is a motley crew of misfits; which he calls "the loonies". This is where the movie shines, in the "off-the-cuff" writing and character development. I loved the "the loonies". I loved how they were all their own individual character, and yet all of them were flawed.
The problem is with what I didn't like. Mr. Black has taken the easy path with this new "reboot". "How do we breathe life into an otherwise dead franchise?" "Make the predator bigger and badder." Which they did. But not only are we denied some beautiful creation put together by a mind like Sam Winston, what we are given is a poor- bigger, yes- but not so much badder, C.G. monster that looks more like a cartoon than a threat. So, you've got these great characters played by great actors and you throw the cinematic equivalent of Scooby Doo at them. Essentially there is nothing original to this movie at all. Why even the soundtrack is a rehash of the brilliant passages first created by Alan Silvestri.
"The Predator" is fun. But it's also inherently vacuous. (Part of me thinks it might not be even as good as the rating I'm giving it.) That's why I give it a low BIRTHDAY CAKE review.
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