The plot is shopworn, the ending is muddled...the actors are wasted, and the only serious action comes much too late for anyone to care.
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Let's see. Where were we? Oh, yes. It was 1987, and the Predator had just dispatched Carl Weathers and the governor of Minnesota before being cornered by Big Arnold near a river in the Central American jungles. And we thought that was the end of the big fella. The Predator, I mean, not Big Arnold. But, no, it wasn't. Any time you've got an enormously popular action thriller like "Predator," you've got to have a sequel. Thus, "Predator 2" came to the screen in 1990.
This time the creature is busying himself in Los Angeles, nothing new to the adventure genre. After all, Tarzan left the jungles for the Big Apple. King Kong effected a transition and climbed the Empire State Building. Even the T-Rex from "Jurassic Park" made it to the mainland to terrorize a metropolis. Only now, the Predator doesn't have Schwarzenegger to deal with; nor does he have director John McTiernan ("Die Hard," "The Hunt for Red October") to guide him through his paces. Worse, the critter doesn't have the spectacular scenery and gorgeous cinematography of the original movie to maintain our interest. Instead, the thing is being chased through the city streets by Danny Glover, one of my favorite people but no match for the characters of the first movie and a helpless victim of the sequel's stale script.
If you recall, the Predator creature is from another planet, coming to Earth centuries ago to hunt and choosing to hang out for most of that time in the jungles of Central America. I suppose he figured there was more game there for him to hunt. Anyway, tiring of the rain forests, he (or another of his kind; it isn't made clear just yet) decides to move to the urban jungles to find his trophies, which include human skulls and various parts of the human anatomy.
The critter is a perfect hunting machine and butt-ugly to boot. He sees with thermal-image vision, meaning he senses body heat, and he can bend light so that his physical structure is mostly invisible to his prey. Seems an unfair advantage, given that he's also amazingly strong and agile, with extra-keen hearing and uncanny intelligence. We're told he's a hunter from a race of hunters, and now we're the hunted.
The movie begins in 1997, ten years after Big Arnold's encounter with the beast. But it doesn't start with the beast. The movie's opening sequence depicts a war between the Los Angeles Police Department and a pair of rival Colombian and Jamaican drug gangs. This fight is so badly staged, I thought at first it was intended as parody. I expected a director to yell "cut" at any moment. With the police unable to make any headway in the battle, Danny Glover shows up as Police Lieutenant Mike Harrigan and single-handedly kills every bad guy in sight. Well, almost; and without the help of his usual partner, Mel Gibson, to boot. To complicate matters, it seems a few of baddies are hiding inside a building, but before Harrigan can get to them they are all mysteriously killed. (We know it was by the Predator, but the police don't know it.) The creature, you see, likes to give his victims a fighting chance, so he only goes after humans who are armed. Sporting fellow.
Harrigan wants to find out who killed the heavies before he got to them, but his bosses on the force, Heinemann (Robert Davi) and Pilgrim (Kent McCord), won't let him proceed with his investigation because the feds get involved. Special Agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) of the DEA leads a group of federal agents assigned to the case, who push Harrigan aside. Harrigan, being a typical movie cop, is a hotheaded maverick who refuses to be shoved into a corner and, accordingly, he disobeys orders at every turn to get to the bottom of things.
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[release]10732[/release]