Rating of
2/4
"Predator 2" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 03/25/12
The predator returns to stalk supercop Danny Glover on the streets of a suburban warzone while a federal special ops team try to track down and capture the creature. Relocating the predator story to a humid city environment in the middle of a gang war was actually a pretty strong idea, but the execution falls far short of the promising concept. Much of the first half of the film is a hang over from trashy 80s cop films, full of posturing stereotypes who come across as little more than foul-mouthed, trigger happy thugs because it lacks the tongue in cheek humour of the first film. The supporting cast are without exception awful, and the cinematography tacky and cheap looking. Add some poor production design (the predator ship looks rubbish) and very dated effects and we have a typical sequel in that a great idea is dragged down to the level of a straight to DVD release. It's not a complete waste of time;it starts reasonably well and the sequence where they try to capture the predator is decent, although it's a transparent and hugely inferior rip off of the first encounter scene in Aliens. The predator is still a very cool creation, and seeing a Geiger alien skull in their ship probably caused every sci-fi nerd who saw it to spontaneously ejaculate. In fact the much maligned AVP films are both rather a lot better than this, and probably saved the Predator franchise from a similar fate to Starship Troopers'.
