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Chad
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Posted: August 18, 2004 at 12:00am
Dutch, a military special forces operative, is sent on a mission along with a group of five other guys to recover a group of people held hostage by guerrillas in Latin American country. Dutch was hand-picked for the job by Dillon, a former military guy who has now become a CIA pencil-pusher... but for this assignment, Dillon will be coming along as well. As the group makes their way towards the guerrillas camp through the jungle, they find some men hanging upside-down from a tree; all have been completely skinned. It turns out that Dillon had sent another group of guys in to rescue the hostages, and this is all that remains of them. They move along through the jungle and easily kill off the guerrillas, but the question remains... if they were able to easily kill them all off, what happened to the other guys who were just as skilled as them? The answer soon becomes clear to them, as someone (or something) begins killing off the members of Dutch's group one by one.
This is definitely one of the better films in the action genre, and it also features a shockingly great performance by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role of Dutch. Normally, he's pretty routine in his roles, with the same blend of mindless action and lame one-liners... but here he manages to pull out a good, convincing performance, and he kept the one-liners to a minimum. Of course, Arnold wasn't the only guy in the movie, it certainly didn't hurt matters that he had a great cast surrounding him as well. Jesse Ventura, another later-to-be United States governor, also puts out a nice performance as Blain, one of the fellows in Dutch's group, with some classic lines and scenes. Bill Duke (Mac) also joins the ranks of solid performers here, but only after witnessing the death of one of his fellow marines and turning into the paranoid, psycho version of himself. Before that scene, he was decent at best, but afterwards, he's beyond great. Go figure on that one. The only person I really had a problem with was Carl Weathers as Dillon. He wasn't too bad by himself (when he wasn't too concerned with showing off his muscles), but came off as being simply average while being surrounded by great performers.
The storyline here is pretty straight-forward and linear, and doesn't rely on too much brain-work by the audience. However, things are kept interesting throughout thanks to the cast and their interactions with one another, and some special effects which are still quite nice seventeen years after the films debut. Things were also paced out in a better fashion than most films in the action genre, and it wasn't scene after scene of violence and explosions. There was plenty of that to be had, of course, but things were paced out enough so as not to become repetitive at any point... something directors of action films should definitely take a note of. Even with the running-time of almost two hours (on the special edition that I watched), things moved along smoothly and I never found myself checking to see how much more there was to go before the credits... a feat in and of itself.
Overall, this one ends up being one of the better movies in the sci-fi action genre, and should definitely be checked out if you're into that type of film. 9/10 from myself.
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Ginose
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Posted: September 9, 2005 at 5:58pm
Dominant to Predator 2... let's just pretend AVP was never made...
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bluemeanie
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Posted: October 18, 2005 at 9:51pm
Arnold Schwarzenegger...Carl Weathers...Jesse Ventura...how can you go wrong. This film kicked ass. 7.5/10.
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Strait Killa
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Posted: March 30, 2006 at 1:26am
i've probably seen this movie more times than almost any other movie. they show it nearly every week on FX, and i always end up watching it when it comes on TV. one of the best action movies, in my opinion, ever made.
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Alex P
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Posted: September 26, 2006 at 5:41am
rocking a line up with 2 governors in it.
i actually wore this tape out when i was really little so its way up there on my fav list.
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johannesfaust
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Posted: February 27, 2009 at 7:43pm
one of my favorites ever...
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Lucid Dreams
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Posted: May 18, 2010 at 4:21pm
I loved this movie growing up and I still do today. I just saw the Predators movie trailer...at least I believe that is what the title is and it looks alright, but trailers have fooled me many times. 9/10
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