The Predator reviews

"Predator" begins like "Rambo" and ends like "Alien," and in today's Hollywood, that's creativity. Most movies are inspired by only one previous blockbuster.

The movie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the leader of a U.S. Army commando team that goes into the South American jungle on a political mission and ends up dueling with a killer from outer space. This is the kind of idea that is produced at the end of a 10-second brainstorming session, but if it's done well, who cares?

"Predator" is filmed very well. It's a slick, high-energy action picture that takes a lot of its strength from its steamy locations in Mexico. The heroes spend most of their time surrounded by an impenetrable jungle, a green wall of majestic vistas populated by all sorts of natural predators in addition to the alien. I've rarely seen a jungle look more beautiful, or more convincing; the location effect is on a par with "Fitzcarraldo" and "The Emerald Forest."

As the film opens, Schwarzenegger and his comrades venture into this jungle in search of South American officials who have been kidnapped by terrorists. They track and locate the fugitives, and move in for the kill. But as they find the bodies of team members skinned and hanging from trees, they begin to realize they're up against more than terrorists.

The predator of the movie's title is a visitor from space; that's established in the opening scene. What it is doing in the jungle is never explained. The creature lives in the trees, even though it seems to be a giant biped much too heavy to swing from vines. When Schwarzenegger finally grapples with it, we discover it is wearing a space suit, and that inside the suit is a disgusting creature with a mouth surrounded by little pincers to shove in the food.

Such details are important, of course. Stan Winston, who designed the creature, has created a beast that is sufficiently disgusting to justify Schwarzenegger's loathing for it. And the action moves so quickly that we overlook questions such as (1) Why would an alien species go to all the effort to send a creature to Earth, just so that it could swing from trees and skin American soldiers? Or, (2) Why would a creature so technologically advanced need to bother with hand-to-hand combat, when it could just zap Arnold with a ray gun?

At one point in the movie, the creature removes its helmet so it can battle Arnold mano-a-mano, and I was cynical enough to assume that its motivation was not macho pride, but the desire to display Winston's special effects.

None of these logical questions are very important to the movie. "Predator" moves at a breakneck pace, it has strong and simple characterizations, it has good location photography and terrific special effects, and it supplies what it claims to supply: an effective action movie.

Students of trivia might want to note that the actor inside the predator costume is Kevin Peter Hall, who also occupies the Bigfoot costume in "Harry and the Hendersons."

This guy must really be a good sport.

I

f idd bleeds, we can kill it…” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gung-ho commando announces his crucial insight in this classic slice of 80s action mayhem – now on rerelease – about a bunch of US special forces guys facing an extraterrestrial monster deep in the Central American jungle. The movie emerged 30 years ago from the deepest thicket of Reaganite America’s subconscious, just when the nation was anxious about Daniel Ortega’s Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The guys’ rude jokes, together with an apparently duplicitous female insurgent and the alien creature’s row of teeth may also point to a Freudian explanation.

In movie terms, it arrived via Jaws, Alien, The Terminator and Rambo, and recent comedies such as Tropic Thunder have paid affectionate homage to director John McTiernan’s unselfconsciously forthright style and his passionate love of automatic weaponry going off deafeningly and interminably.

Schwarzenegger plays Dutch, an alpha-warrior called in, along with a roistering band of brothers, when the government claim they need him and his crew to rescue some hostages from the jungle. But someone or something is flaying its victims alive. Dutch and his men find themselves being tracked by a creepy, murderous alien way up in the branches. Dutch isn’t going down without a fight.

Veteran screenwriter Shane Black has an acting role, as the wisecracking guy who loves bad jokes, the sort of character who is traditionally earmarked for an early exit.

we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.