John McTiernan’s Predator came out 31 years ago, it spawned 2 sequels and 2 spinoffs. The original film felt fresh when it’s released back in the late 80s and I think it’s one of the Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best films. The two sequels weren’t as good, both has its moments but quite forgettable to me. The spinoffs Alien vs. Predator were just awful. Yet somehow the studio folks at Fox never gave up the idea that it can turn into some profitable franchise for them. So, when Shane Black’s career got a new life after the success of Iron Man 3, he was offered a chance to write and direct a new solo Predator film.

While on a mission somewhere in in the jungle of Mexico, army sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) has an encounter with the Predator when its ship crash landed near his vicinity. McKenna decided to take a closer look at the alien spaceship but quickly realized he’s in danger when the occupant turns out to be hostile and killed all of his sniper teammates. But before he escaped, he’s able to grab some of the Predator’s equipment and sent them back to his house. After he escaped, McKenna was taken into questioning by a secret government agency lead by Traeder (Sterling K. Brown). Knowing he’s in danger with his own government, McKenna decided to keep his mouth shut and said he doesn’t know anything about what he saw but Traeder didn’t believe him and put him on a bus to take him to a more secure location for more questioning. While on the bus, McKenna got to know some weird characters ex-military men prisoners. Back at his home, the Predator’s items ended up at the hands of this autistic son Rory (Jacob Tremblay), who studies them intently and accidentally sending a signal to another Predator who comes to earth for blood.

Traeder’s team was able to capture the predator and decided to call up a scientist named Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) to help with figuring out why the alien is back on earth. Of course, things didn’t turn out well and the Predator was able to free himself and killed a lot of people. It’s now up to Mckenna and his team of ex-military misfits to stop not one but two Predators from destroying the world.

Co-written by Black and his best bud Fred Dekker, the story is kind of mess. There’s no real focus on the plot, there are plenty of ideas being thrown around but Black and Dekker are only interested in delivering funny dialogs and on-screen violence. Also, by giving us more information about the Predator’s intention, it just took out the mysteries surrounding these creatures and made them less scary. To me, what worked in the first film was the lack of information about the Predator, it’s here to hunt people for sports and it kills for fun; that to me made the first film kind of scary.

Speaking of violence, Black intended to make this film as hard R rated as he could, so if you have weak stomach, you might not like the over the top violence being shown on screen. The most disappointing thing to me about this film was the lack of any signature action scenes. Sure, there are plenty of action in the film but most of them were badly-shot or ended way too quickly. Black is known for writing some of the best action films ever made, but as a director, he just doesn’t know how to execute his written words for the screen.

Performance wise, I think the supporting cast were pretty good. But I was never a fan of Holbrook and he’s not a strong leading man material. He’s the kind of actor who tends overacts and I never believe the character he’s portraying. Sterling K. Brown seemed to have a lot of fun, his character is combination of Carl Weather’s character from the first film and Gary Busey’s from the second. He overacts in a lot of his scenes, but I didn’t mind it too much. Just like other Predator films, Munn’s the only female character in the story and I thought she carried herself pretty well. I’m just glad they didn’t make her into another damsel-in-distress type.

I think this is a film that could’ve been a lot better with fresh eyes, but with Black having full control, he really wants to take the audience back into the old style of action films from bygone years. I personally don’t mind that at all if it’s well made but this latest sequel was just too messy and didn’t have a real focus. While I enjoyed some parts of it, I kind of wish they got a new crew to work on this one.

So have you seen The Predator? Well, what did you think?

…