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PREDATOR
 
STARRING:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, Bill Duke, Jesse
Ventura, Sonny Landham, Richard Chaves, R.G. Armstrong, Shane Black, Kevin
Peter Hall
1987,
107 Minutes, Directed by John McTiernan
 Description:
Arnold Schwarzenegger leads an elite squad of U.S. Army commandos to a remote
region of South American jungle, where they've been assigned to search for South
American officials who've been kidnapped by terrorists. Instead they find a
bunch of skinned corpses hanging from the trees and realize that they're now
facing a mysterious and much deadlier threat. As the squad is picked off one by
one, Arnold finds himself pitted against a hideous alien creature that's heavily
armed and wearing a spacesuit enabling the creature to render itself invisible. —
Amazon.com
Big budget
B-movie as Arnie gets slugged around a lot by a viscous intergalactic big
game hunter in some South American jungle.
While
the said "predator" is truly a unique creation in
science fiction moviedom, one cannot help but feel like a
character from a previous Schwarzenegger movie who at some stage
remarked in desperation: "I've had enough of this macho
bullshit!"
Instead
of being given believable characters to identify with, we have to
cope with an elite military platoon with some serious testosterone
problems sent to rescue hostages from a guerrilla group. After
having wrecked the guerrilla base in true Rambo style, they find that
there are no hostages and that they have been set-up by their commanders to
retrieve stolen information instead.
On their way back, they get
picked off one by one by an invisible alien. At the end only Schwarzenegger
remains who we know will not die because he is, after all, the lead actor in the
film. And he's Schwarzenegger, of course. This film garnered
quite a cult following although it's rather difficult to see why:
it's Rambo meets Alien!
(Followed by a sequel,
Predator 2, in 1990 starring Mel Gibson's "I'm getting
to old for this shit" Lethal Weapon sidekick and no Arnie! In 2004
Alien vs Predator combined the two moribund franchises in
one filmic outing.)
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