Let’s go back thirty years to 1990 one more time for another
Mildly Contested Sequel! Well, maybe not as contested as it used to be, but it certainly
was for a time. For my liking, time has been kinder to it than some certain
other sequels—so, let’s mount your laser-guided plasma cannon, turn up the
infra-red, and get stuck in with Predator 2.
Only a couple years after getting impaled by Arnold
Schwarzenegger and then nuking a jungle, everyone’s favorite outer space
dreadlocked game hunter comes back for another go in the gang war-torn streets
of Los Angeles in the far future of 1997! Yeah, this one did what a lot of
movies did at the time and extended the crimewave obsessions to their logical
extremes, with street firefights seeing cars exploded left and center while
gangs tote military-grade weapons with impunity. And the movie doesn’t waste
any time getting right into the middle of all this, setting up the tone immediately
with cursing, violence aplenty, and cocaine flying everywhere.
Our protagonist to tussle with the Pred this time is LAPD
officer Harrigan, played by Danny Glover. He’s the typical grizzled cop who
doesn’t play by the rules, yadda yadda—basically, Glover turned around and
decide to play Murtagh from Lethal Weapon this time. Still, while the character
himself isn’t that special, Glover’s got enough gravelley-voiced grit and
physical presence that he makes it work. When he gets pissed off, you do start
rooting for him to kick some ass, be it earthly or extra-terrestrial.
The film has a nice, trashy, unapologetic atmosphere of
urban decay—it’s very nineties and over the top, but that’s what makes it
enjoyable for me. You’ve got absurd stuff like voodoo cultist gangsters and
their sword-toting leader rather futilely trying to take on the Predator, as
well as cartoonish punks harassing people on the subway like they did in every
film of this era, but it’s always played to just the right sort of hilt that
somehow, it’s still somehow believable enough. There is a fun undercurrent of
dark satire, like a sleazy reporter manically trying to exploit the violent
proceedings, or a prevalence of armed citizens on a train just leading to a bloodbath
once the Predator decides he wants in.
Another thing I like is that it doesn’t entirely rehash the
first—sure, the general gist is the same, but whereas Arnold and his commando
team in the first one were mostly just trying to stay alive and ahead of it,
Harrigan isn’t even really aware of who he’s dealing with until a fair bit in, largely
escalating his efforts to track down what he assumes is some sort of mad
killer. There’s also a team of government agents lead by the wonderfully hammy
Gary Busey, who give us an interesting twist of turning the hunter into the
hunted, and one of the most fun parts of the flick where for a moment you start
rooting for the Pred.
There are some faults for me—Glover’s supporting cast isn’t
as memorable or fun as the other special forces badasses that accompanied Arnie
last time around. You’ve got his best friend who you hardly get to know before
he gets offed (Ruben Blades), a spicy Latin woman (Maria Alonso), and a stereotypical jockish asshole (Bill Paxton) who
also isn’t long for this world. Compared to Jesse Ventura and Carl Weathers,
you want a little bit more, but I guess Busey makes up for it somewhat. There’s
also a couple other characters who could’ve used just a bit more screentime, like
the aforementioned sword-wielding drug lord.
Still, the climax of the film is a great chase from rooftop
to rooftop, with apartments being smashed and limbs being severed—and the
Predator itself looks excellent here, with the costume and props being refined to
a beautifully badass and real-looking level. The ending is very memorable, as Harrigan
chases the murderous alien onto its ship, and ends up having a meeting with the
whole clan. This part right here is important as we glimpse the skull of a
certain Alien—and that little cameo of sorts went on to spawn a whole separate
crossover franchise of Aliens Vs Predator, starting with comics, then videogames,
then a pair of crummy movies that we may or may not rip into one day!
Overall? Predator 2 is an underrated one for me, and it
stands up better next to those aforementioned awful AVP films, and especially
the most recent Predator flick. It’s rough around the edges, sure, but it knows
what it is, what it wants to deliver, and deliver it does, with blood-soaked gusto.
That unapologetic energy is something I do miss from action films of this era. And,
with that, I’ll leave you with this little gem, which really should’ve been the
after-credits stinger:
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