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“This is Tony Pope, live from L.A., the city of fear, where the psycho vigilante killer continues his daily diet for murder. Bodies strung out. Bodies with the skins ripped off. The hearts torn from the cadavers...” Tony Pope
Synopsis:
Los Angeles is in the grip of a bloody turf war between Columbian and Jamaican drug cartels, and the only thing standing between them and total anarchy is the LAPD, among them the hardened and seemingly unstoppable Lieutenant Mike Harrigan. However, Harrigan finds his investigations hampered by the arrival of a secretive Federal task-force, and soon discovers that the cities most recent spate of brutal killings is the work of an alien creature that hunts for sport...
Script: 1/2 – Fun, if by-the-numbers.
Pace: 2/2 – Starts fast and doesn't let-up.
Acting: 1/2 – Characters are painted in broad strokes but played well.
Aesthetic: 2/2 – The creature and gore effects all all top-draw.
Intention: 2/2 – Not content to re-hash, it builds on what has come before.
Final Word: 8/10
Directed by Stephen Hopkins (who's career has never exactly bloomed beyond B-movie fare), Predator 2 caught a lot of flack on it's release; often thought of as a bitter disappointment to Schwarzenegger's 1987 monster-flick, and even today is considered controversial for scenes of gratuitous violence and questionable racial stereotypes. Despite that, as a blood-thirsty teenager I was more than satisfied, and even now as a (slightly) better-adjusted adult I think most of the criticism directed against the film is totally unfair.
Sure, it IS bloody, but then, it IS a horror movie, and no more gory than the first Predator film. While this sequel may play-up the ethnic-drug-dealer stereotypes, it's not as if gangs like these don't exist, and one should also consider that three of the four heroic leads in Predator 2 are of either black or Latino heritage.
While Predator 2 isn't exactly high-art, it provides all the genre thrills you could really ask for in a film about an intergalactic alien slaughtering its way across the city, and in my honest opinion it's a worthy successor to the original. It does more than simply serve up more of what's come before, shifting the action into the 'concrete jungle' of Los Angeles, giving the titular creature a new hunting-ground to explore, and a whole bunch of new tools to mangle his victims with. Danny Glover makes a suitably ballsy successor to Arnie, chewing and smashing his way from scene-to-scene with gusto. His opening scene, in which he is introduced as a gun-toting loose-cannon, is hilariously super-charged to the point of derangement- and in a nice bit of writing that askews expectations, this crusading super-hero is given a humerus fear of heights, which is more than a simple throw-away joke as Harrigan's pursuit of the Predator will see him in a number of lofty locals. Gary Busey (who also starred with Glover in Lethal Weapon) makes the most of his scenes as Agent Keys, the human antagonist, while Maria Conchita Alonso and Bill Paxton swagger and fight alongside Glover as his crime-fighting LAPD partners through an urban nightmare populated by sleazy journalists, sweating gang-bangers and ruthless government agencies.
There's a number of entertaining scenes throughout the film's 95 min run-time; the massacre on-board a moving subway is a particular stand-out moment of inventive carnage and dark humor (with the LA commuters packing some serious heat), as is a cat-and-mouse pursuit through an old slaughter house that sees an attempt to apprehend the Predator go quite badly, and the final reveal on-board the creature's hidden shuttle...
All in all, Predator 2 is just a fun film, with all the dials turned up to 11, and like the original before it, it's bloody, uncouth, quotable (“this is not about money, this is about power”) high-octane and ridiculously macho.
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