The Predator English Movie
It's an interesting experience walking into a franchise film without having seen any of the previous films that made it a franchise. Does the lack of expectations help or hurt its cause? I'm still not sure but it doesn't help The Predator if you're an admirer of director Shane Black's previous work.
The plot? A "space alien" crash lands on Earth, kills a few people, and then a few people with a certain set of skills and lack of certain set of mental faculties try to kill it back. As simple as that.
Shane Black and his writing partner Fred Dekker are more concerned with putting down lines after lines of dialogue rather than working on a layered story in their resuscitation of the decades-old franchise that has now spawned 6 films (and counting?) Black has always been a talk-y filmmaker and his style of spout-a-line, flash-a-smile banter usually adds to his comically grey characters rather than just being lip service. Remember Downey Jr.-Kilmer in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Gosling-Crowe in The Good Guys?
Alas, the chit-chat between his ex-soldier characters here clearly is a coverup for the lack of any sort of plot progression, or for that matter, any sort of plot at all. The hostage rescue operation from the opening scene is never mentioned again. The absolute freedom and illegal tactics enjoyed and employed by the officers of the fictional Operation Stargazer are never justified by a backstory. Olivia Munn's scientist character is still given a exposition-heavy history but why out of the whole world was she picked to help with the Predators? No idea. And let's not start with the "twist" centered on the motivations of the first Predator, which never match his actual actions.
Making matters worse is the fact that the dialogue too often lies on the wrong side of the borderline of offensiveness. Or maybe that's always been the case with Black's films but the offensiveness was always offset by likeable characters that you could root for, even if they weren't always in the right. Here, you know you've gone wrong when most of the characters are less developed than a Predator Dog.
That's not to say that there's no fun to be had in the proceedings. On the contrary, barring a few unfortunate dialogues, there are still some crackling foul-mouthed machismo lines in the mix. The choice of characters, a bunch of PTSD-suffering soldiers put out to pasture and a young autistic kid, make for interesting dynamics and lend to more plausible, high-octane scenes. And for all the tentpole fatigue that's started to set in with the same action set pieces repeated film after film today, Black manages to liven things up with graphic bloody violence that involves heads being severed and countless impalements at the hands of the Predator.
The performances are pretty standard by modern action film standards, with throwaway lines interspersed with a few thousand bullets being fired at obviously impenetrable enemies. Boyd Holbrook, somehow the leading man of the film, is decent but never manages to pull the audience in to the story. Trevante Rhodes is good fun while the fun lasts. Keegan Michael Key and Thomas Jane make for an interesting pair. Olivia Munn is the latest victim of Black's boys-will-be-boys, girls-will-be-mostly-haplessly-rescued character development. Sterling K. Brown's character is a piece of cardboard with a funny laugh but at least he gets a couple of good lines. Alfie Allen is missed less than the faceless guy who gets shot from a distance in the very first scene. Jacob Tremblay plays the autistic son of Holbrook's character with utmost sincerity, the only character you get to care for throughout the running time.
At the end of the day, there's plenty of bang for your buck available. How satisfying all that banging is completely depends on how much slack you can cut for the autopilot writing and how much you can enjoy the increasingly repetitive gory kills till the final body drops.
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