Oct 101990
 
three reels

Near-future L.A. is in the midst of a drug war, and a predator has chosen this urban jungle as the site for his hunt.  Police Lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) and his team (Rubén Blades,  Maria Conchita Alonso, Bill Paxton) are stuck in the middle.  As Mike Harrigan tries to stop this invisible killer, he is stifled by a mysterious federal agent (Gary Busey).

An unfairly maligned sequel to the bang-smash-pow Predator, Predator 2 delivers much of the same.  Minutely less original than its not very original predecessor, this is structurally the same film.  Normally, that would be a huge detriment, but new concepts weren’t the high point of the first, nor does it play a part here.  As for the incessant whining of critics, every complaint leveled against Predator 2 equally fits its acclaimed predecessor.

The cliché-ridden soldiers have been replaced by cliché-ridden cops.  Tough, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is out; tough, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Mike (Danny Glover) is in.  Both characters have been done to death, but I’m a bit more tired of the cop who does things his own way.  The arguments with his superiors are almost unwatchable.

The flawed, sometimes comical but skilled sidekicks are new characters, but fulfill the same purpose as the old sidekicks.  Of these, Paxton is the one to rise above his part, and while he doesn’t steal the show as he did in Aliens, he is memorable.

Like its predecessor, the opening is the weakest part.  Instead of Arnold fighting South American communists for no reason, there’s Danny fighting South American and Jamaican drug dealers for no reason.  But once the sides are clearly drawn, Predator 2 is an action-packed, blood-soaked, glowing-weapons-rich slug-fest.  The slaughter on the train is as tense as anything in its prequel.  The gore is more intense and the nudity…well, it exists in this one.  The ending is more satisfying than the first’s, not only for the final confrontation, but also for the now famous joke of the Alien skull along with some Predator lore.  Predator 2 might have exceeded its progenitor if there had been less “maverick cop” moments and the real battle had started earlier, but the first half drags and the federal agents sub-plot goes nowhere, so it ends up being a sequel, with all that implies.

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