Predator 2 **** (1990, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Bill Paxton, Kevin Peter Hall) – Classic Film Review 562

With Arnold Schwarzenegger too busy on Terminator 2: Judgment Day to do the sequel to his 1987 hit, Danny Glover stars in 1990 as veteran LAPD officer detective lieutenant Mike Harrigan, the Predator’s hunter-turned-prey. With original director John McTiernan’s fee rocketing after Die Hard to $2million, Stephen Hopkins takes over as director for this grim and gruesome but often extremely effective sci-fi fantasy revenge thriller. McTiernan directed The Hunt for Red October instead.

It’s set 10 years on from the jungle-bound original (ie 1997) in a heat-hazed, urban jungle LA beset with territorial gang wars and race troubles. There, Glover leads the beleaguered cops tracking crazed drug-dealers. He and his partner Jerry Lambert (Bill Paxton) investigate what seems to be a bloody feud between voodoo high priest King Willie (Calvin Lockhart)’s Jamaican gangs and Ramon Vega (Corey Rand)’s Colombian drug gang.

Federal agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) arrives when the body count mysteriously mounts and he and his team shield the crime scene even from the LAPD. But after forensics proves the killer must be an alien, Busey and Harrigan join forces to try to take down the sophisticated alien hunter Predator they find stalking the citizens of Los Angeles.

Keyes was originally intended to be Dutch, Schwarzenegger’s character from the first film. Schwarzenegger is said to have declined the role because he disliked the sequel’s script with its urban concept and he wanted McTiernan back.

The new Predator, a superior version of the original, is an admirable alien of very considerable credit to effects man Stan Winston and actor Kevin Peter Hall, providing the film’s main interest and excitement. It’s a great monster. And the film puts the monster centre stage with much more screen time. With more time in production, Winston came up with ideas and designs with more exotic weapons, such as the retractable spear, the detachable pincers, the Frisbee blade and the net for the Predator to use that would differentiate him form the original.

But the movie is quite violent and grisly, and derivatively written by original writers Jim Thomas and John Thomas, with the effort and strain the screenplay has taken showing on screen. And it’s rather untidily directed by A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 director Stephen Hopkins, who heads for the gore-driven nasty-toned horror route rather than the smart sci-fi action adventure of the original.

Even so, the film was re-cut over 20 times to remove more graphic shots of mutilated bodies and decapitations. It was the first film to be given the newly instituted NC-17 rating in the US for its graphic violence before it was re-cut to its final theatrical length. The original uncut version has still never been released.

Glover, excellent actor though he is, seems slightly uncomfortable with such material, and, though he was only 44, he looks a shade too old or wise for this no-acting-required action man stuff, and some other thoughtful actors make little headway too. Bill Paxton does well, though, as Harrigan’s cocky detective partner Jerry Lambert and Ruben Blades scores as Danny Archuleta.

On the plus side, production designer Lawrence G Paull’s dark futureworld is highly imaginative and convincing and some suspense scenes are nail-bitingly gripping, especially the slaughterhouse sequence. The movie does succeed in its game plan of being realistic and gory, and without it there could have been no AvP and AvP-2.

It’s a shame that the film fizzles out in an open, unsatisfying ending, which threatens a further sequel, and then it didn’t materialise. But the Predator returned in Alien Vs Predator (2004) and 2010 brought Predators.

Putting the Alien skull on the trophy case on the Predator ship Stephen Hopkins’s idea to show all the different species and creatures that the Predators have hunted and killed. It helped spark the popularity of the Aliens vs. Predator series and eventually lead to the movies.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 562

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