It's a sad truth, but sometimes great movies end up with lousy sequels. The Jurassic Park sequels sucked, the Matrix sequels sucked, and Superman and Batman have had their fair share of bad sequels. Unfortunately, the same can be said for one of my favorite '80s movies, Predator. The movie that saw Arnold Schwarzenegger battle an alien big game hunter in the Guatemalan jungle is a modern classic in both the action and science fiction genres, and made a ton of money to boot. So naturally, a sequel was bound to happen. Hitting theaters three years after the original, Predator 2 is sadly a lesser movie than its predecessor. But what makes it that way?
As the movie opens, the city of Los Angeles finds itself stuck in the middle of a violent and bloody turf war between rival Columbian and Jamaican drug cartels. Throw in the fact that this turf war is taking place during the worst heat wave in recent memory, and L.A. isn't a great place to be. But things go from bad to worse when a Predator (Kevin Peter Hall) arrives in town and begins slaughtering both cops and members of the drug cartels.
Police lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover), a key member of the LAPD's efforts to stop the war, soon finds himself face to face with the Predator after it kills some of his colleagues. Lieutenant Harrigan is forced to team with stubborn federal agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey), who leads a task force dedicated to catching the Predator for scientific research, in order to combat the alien threat before it can butcher the entire city.
The truth is that Predator 2 is really more disappointing than anything. I absolutely love the Predator franchise, but Predator isn't quite as successful in inspiring the same level of excitement and entertainment as either the first one or the one that Robert Rodriguez produced last year. The movie is a total letdown, as sad as that is to say.
Helming the movie is Stephen Hopkins, a director whose résumé includes such flicks as the Lost in Space movie, the fifth Nightmare on Elm Street movie, and twelve episodes of 24. His work with Predator 2 is actually pretty good, keeping things moving at a steady pace with impressive cinematography, tight editing, and some really cool action sequences. The only problem I had with it is that it doesn't really feel like a Predator movie. It doesn't have the same kind of presence as the other two movies in the trilogy. Maybe it's the change in setting to an urban jungle instead of a regular jungle, I don't know. But Predator 2 feels a lot different from the other two movies, and I can't say that's a good thing.
It's weird, too, because Predator 2 was written by Jim and John Thomas, the writers of the first movie. You'd think that the guys who created the Predator in the first place would be able to write a kickass sequel. But no, Predator 2 doesn't kick ass. The script is weak, frankly. What little story there is is stupid, the dialogue is crap, and the whole thing translates into a movie that ends up being more of a chore to watch than anything else. Okay, yeah, Predator wasn't the paragon of thought-provoking screenwriting or anything, but at least it didn't make you want to go watch something else instead.
And this brings us to the cast, which is forgettable to say the least. Danny Glover plays the movie's resident hero, and he's... well, he's less than impressive. I generally like Glover's work, but he just seems like the wrong person for the role. He's playing the role like your typical "reckless cop" action hero, but it doesn't suit him. It's like Glover went from playing Roger Murtaugh to playing Martin Riggs. He's a bad fit for the movie, and both his performance and the movie suffer for it. The rest of the cast isn't that great, either. Bill Paxton is annoying beyond belief, María Conchita Alonso is just plain bad, and Gary Busey is Gary Busey. I'm just sad that Busey doesn't go completely over the top with his overacting. It would have the movie just a little bit more entertaining.
Predator 2 didn't have to turn out this way. It could have been awesome. But it's not. It's just another incident of a lame sequel following an awesome movie. I hate when that happens, but you can't really change things twenty years after the fact. It's at least a watchable lousy movie. It has that going for it, at least. But I can't give Predator 2 anything higher than two stars. Really, how sad is it that it took 20th Century Fox over two decades to make a movie with the Predator in it that was worth watching?
Final Rating: **
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