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Predator

Predator

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The best movie of Schwarzenegger's career
Review: Predator is one of those movies that I just can't help watching every now and then when I have some free time. I have probably seen it at least five times already, with many more viewings likely in the future.

Even though this movie has a small cast (about 10 actors...total), each character's personality is developed and the viewer becomes familiar with each of their survival mentalities. The main character is Dutch, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, in what I consider to be his best movie performance in his career. Although he does not say much (does he ever?) and his manner is hardened and strict, he fits the role perfectly. This is especially apparent in the final scene when he must do battle with the Predator, nicely played by Kevin Peter Hall. The other actors in this movie (Weathers, Carrillo, Black, and at the time, future politician Jesse Ventura) all turn in decent performances. The casting was perfect and resulted in good acting.

Two elements that really make this movie great are the soundtrack and the scenery. The haunting music is fantastic and it's unfortunate that only the soundtrack for Predator 2 is available. The scenery of the jungle was aptly chosen and complimented both the story and the actors.

Overall, I cannot find anything wrong with this movie. It is a great sci-fi/thriller film that is guaranteed to be enjoyed by all who see it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Vintage Arnold
Review: Predator is such a fantastic action sci-fi thriller. It's a vintage Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and it's one of the reasons he is where is today.

The plot to Predator is simple enough to follow. Dutch(Schwarzenegger) has been called by Dillon(Weathers) to go to South America and find some missing officials. Dutch takes his squad of elite troops and he does just that. What they find though is skinned bodies of American troops. Slowly Dutch begins to lose his men until it becomes a mission of trying to get out of the jungle alive.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is simply fantastic in this film. This is one of the best action films he has ever made. When him and the predator go one on one it's awesome. It's truly clash of the titans as the warriors fight. Arnold is an absolute beast in the film. He's cut and huge and this movie took place during his stretch of hit movies that he had in the late 1980's. This movie helped make him the household name that he is today.

I liked Carl Weathers in this film. All people ever recognize this guy for is Apollo Creed in Rocky. After seeing him arm wrestle Arnold in the film you really recognize what kind of peak condition this guy was in at one point. I like Carl Weahters a lot and his role in Predator is great.

The rest of Arnolds team is full of plenty of guys that you see in a lot of his 80's movies. The most recognizable guy from his squad is former Gov. Jesse Ventura. The squad is casted perfectly as is this movie.

John McTiernan has to get a lot of credit for the success of this movie. This is a very well made movie. I love what he did with the Predator in the film. You don't get to see to much of the Predator until it squares off against Arnold. So like Spielberg did in Jaws you let the suspense of the creature scare you. McTiernan does that to perfection. He baits you a little bit by showing you some of the Predator but it's just enough to keep you interested and on the edge of your seat. He also shot his movie beautifully on location in South America.

This really is a well made movie. It keeps you on the edge of your seat all the way until the end. It's a great sci-fi thriller and can be argued as the best of all time. You can't be a serious Arnold fan without seeing this picture. You can't really call yourself I sci-fi fan if you havn't seen it either. Go pick Predator up you won't regret it. Now Predator 2, thats an entire different story.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best action film besides LOTR!!!
Review: Predator, in my opinion is the best action/sci-fi movie ever made. It was made in 1987, but looks like it was made in the late 90's. I don't own Predator on any verison, but I've seen enough to know its great. This is how the story runs down:
Arnold and his band of comanndos infiltrate Central America to look for lost soldiers. They get into a few battles with gurilleas but soon find out their friends are dead and skinned alive. And then of course they find out, they're not alone(besides other gurilleas). An alien form a different planet has come to earth to hunt worthy opponents for sport.It has all sorts of weapons and its invisible. It also has infared vision(which looks really cool form the Predator's point of view). Arnold's squad then gets picked off one-by-one by an unknown foe. First Hawkins gets slaughtered, blood everywhere(especially on some hostage woman form the country). He's dragged away into the trees and later his friends find nothing but a gory torso(if that). Next Ventura(thw white guy with the gatling gun) gets killed, something goes right thorugh him and he dies. After that Mr. Rambo (with black hair) stays ont his bridge type thing to comfront the Predator(slashing this chest as a sign of toughness). All you hear is a scream and hes finished. The other two black guys go out to hunt the beast. One gets shot in the head from the Predator's triangular beam, falls and blood just pours all over the ground, dripping off his face). The skinnier balck guy is caught out in the open. The Predator uses his beam and knocks off the guys arm. He yells and watches the Preadtor jump from the tree, run towards him while takin out his metal claws, and just stabs him right in the stomach. That leaves Arnold left (am i forgetting anyone?). He sits up in a tree, preparing his traps, and waits for the Predator. Finally he comes and Arnold gets the crap beaten out of him until the end, which yopu'lkl have to watch for urself it you never saw it.
Overall, Predator is the supreme guy film of our time. Nothing has beaten it in its genre and nothing probably ever will. Predator remains as one of my favorite movies of all time. Non-stop action from beginning to end. Without Predator, your collection isn't full.


Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "The jungle is alive..."
Review: Predator, the film which helped launch the career of director John McTiernan (who would later helm the first Die Hard movie), and the film which introduced us to one of the most terrifying and impressive movie monsters ever in the Predator. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers star as US commandos on a rescue mission in South America, but when they find a group of skinned corpses hanging upside down, plans change. Eventually, one by one each soldier is picked off by an unseen force, until only Arnold is left, and he comes face to face with the sleek alien hunter called the predator which takes his prey's skulls as his trophy. The design of the Predator itself is in a word, awesome. FX and makeup legend Stan Winston (responsible for Pumpkinhead and the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park for starters) outdid himself with the design of the beast, as Arnold puts it in the final fight, "One ugly mother......". While the movie is great, some more special features would have been nice. There is a rumor of a battle filmed between the Predator and Billy which would have been nice to see. All in all though, if you've never had a chance to see the original Predator, now has never been a better time, its one of the best sci-fi/action movies of all time. On a side note, future governor and former WWF wrestler Jessie "The Body" Ventura played one of the commandos, and Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally supposed to be the man in the Predator outfit, but he bowed out at the last minute to film Bloodsport.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Total Testesterone Immersion - Not Good for You
Review: Some special forces types, complete with improbably large muscles and weapons that were surely never meant to be portable, are helicoptered into a jungle somewhere in Latin America with a mission of rescuing some hostages from some guerrillas. Muscles notwithstanding, these seem to be singularly inept special forces: the guerrilla camp arrived at the blunder in, with absolutely minimal reconnaissance to determine basic little things like, duh, where the hostages are located, blowing everything they see sky high and, surprise surprise, all the hostages end up dead. Seeming entirely pleased themselves they then start heading back only to find themselves being picked off by a mysterious semi-invisible alien thingy.

This is the first commercial success in the career of John McTiernan, the 1990s' master of the clunking explosion laden action movie and he is clearly starting as he means to continue. While hugely successful, it's pretty dumb stuff. Even the most basic movies in which we see a bunch of soldier types being picked off by some evil enemy thing usually manage to endow the soldiers in question with discernible character traits which do at least some work in driving the narrative. In this movie they start out as The Guy With Glasses, the Black Guy, the Indian Guy and, by the time they get round to being eaten by the alien have failed to fill out these basic classificatory tags in any interesting way whatever. Comparisons with `Alien' can only be particularly embarrassing. The latter gave us a brilliantly designed, truly original and very scary monster. This gives us, well, a guy in a not very scary monster suit. It's a mild sort of fun in a witless sort of way but ultimately it's almost as dumb as its protagonists.


Rating: 3 stars
Summary: "Dylan!!!!!"
Review: Swirling shots of immersive jungles, a greasy Apollo Creed, and almost intelligable lines like, "You never did know when to quit, did you?" make this the High Chieftan of Arnold flicks. And the Guy Movie among Guy Movies as well; the 2 minute sequence of huge guns spraying masses of lead into nothingness is sheer testosterone.

And no one smokes cigars like Ah-nold.

"Payback Time!" "Ain't got time to bleed!" "Buncha slack-jawed ... around here, this stuff'll make ya into a .... sexual tyrannosaurus! Just like me." I mean, really, who WOULDN'T want Jesse Venture as their state's governor?

Sure this is generic action whatnot from McTiernan, but it's awesome at what it does. And don't deny the great performance of what's-his-name, the guy who plays Ventura's best friend. The "any time" guy. That guy was awesome. His freakouts are genuinely believable.

And seriously, every single line Arnold utters is immense entertainment. He should play every part in every movie for the rest of time.

The reason I gave this DVD three stars is the unforgivable lack of extras, which is inexcusable in this day and age. We want to see Stan Winston making the Predator's crab-claw mouth! We want to see extra closeups of Arnie taking meaty drags from his phallic stogie! And what about the famous behind-the-scenes thirteen-minute brawl between Ahhnold and Weathers, the one that gave Weathers the busted eye socket? Rumor has it McTiernan caught the whole thing on film, including the smack that actually popped Weathers' eye out of the socket momentarily. That stuff would be nice to see.

Criterion has done DVDs of The Rock and Armaggedon, so they shouldn't feel like it would be "low" of them to commit an extensive effort to McTiernan's "crass" bit of masculinity.

"It's been a long time, Colonel..."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the best alien action film out there
Review: when I first saw the first Predator film,I was happy to see the strong male role running for his life. Yet I do think why this editions for the Alien and Predator films are coming out so close to each other is for the summers next cross over. Alien vs Predator. But to the film, the first predator was by far the best. Sending in comandos into a rain forest and each one being killed off is truly a scary sight and yet the movie is full of action. Predator is by far one of my favorit films and I will go by this film when it comes out three days before the opeaning of AVP.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Another lousy transfer
Review: WOW - one of my favorite movies and the transfer is only slightly better than the previous issue. The DTS also is only slightly improved. WHEN are they going to give us a high-def. transfer and remove the grain. If GWTW -1939 can be done, so can Predator. SHAME on them all. You wait, another one will probably be coming in the next yr. and we can all dump this copy to buy that one. So - don't upgrade yet. Wait for the pristine transfer we all know is coming

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: "GET TO THE CHOPPER!!!"
Review: You just can't do much better in the way of man-style 80s shoot-em' up sci-fi action. This classic has plenty of testosterone, special forces dudes blowing things up and busting caps with automatic weapons in the jungle, a space alien hunting them the whole time...and ARNOLD! (Now the "Governator"!)
What more could a guy want in a movie? Lock and load!


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