Finally, a movie with Arnold being a badass! His character’s name is Dutch. We also have Carl Weathers as Dillon, is that a popular black guy name back then, because Alien3 had a black Dillon. We also have the great Jesse Ventura as Blain. I am pumped, let’s have at it.
We are in Central America, Arnold has a stogie. All is well. So we have some military personnel who is missing, so Arnold’s team is brought in to free the hostages, and Dillon is gonna join. Long Tall Sally is playing on the boombox, 80’s style. Blain is jamming out and having some chew. This is a film that was made in an era where they didn’t make these action films to appease the female demographic. Expect lots of mindless action and lots of muscle. There was a solid pussy joke. Jesse was offering people chew, everybody refused so he says “Bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here. This stuff will make you a god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me.” Hell yes! No PC bullshit here. One dude was shaving, and I just don’t think I’d be doing that in a chopper.
They get to their destination and descend via ropes. Definitely digging Blain’s hat. You can guess who my favorite is. They find a chopper caught up in the trees, just hanging there. But it’s upside down. Curious how that happened. We supposedly had 12 guerrillas taking 2 guys, and then 6 guys tracked them. The 6 guys had US gear on. One guy climbs a tree and finds 3 people hanging upside down and skinned. The vultures were out. Dutch finds a dog tag, he was a guy that he knew. Dillon said that the military didn’t know about these men. Blain gets out the minigun, time to get some revenge. We see the Predator’s infamous infrared point of view. Mac is pissed at Dillon making too much noise.
Dutch spots a little community. He sees an American soldier getting beat and then shot in the head. Dutch hatches a plan, and they go for it. One guy is taken out from behind, because he was a dumbass, ya know a foreigner. Mac just hossed another dude. Dutch sets an explosive on the back of a truck and then lifts it and sends it heading to the camp. Lots of fire and explosions. Yup, this is what we paid to see. Blain with the minigun. A few of the guys try to get away in their chopper, but Dillon ain’t having that. Loving the grenade launching and badassery. Arnold still gets his one-liners. This is so much fun. Blain has been hit, and he says that he ain’t got time to bleed. Aww, we have a female character.
Dutch says that Dillon set them up. This was to find Hopper and his men, and this was the only way that he could get a good group in. Makes sense. Dillon used Dutch to get the job done. Dutch says that the men aren’t……expendable. Huh, foreshadowing? Dillon insists on bringing the girl much to Dutch’s chagrin. Mac stabs a scorpion off of Dillon’s back. Hawkins with another pussy joke to Billy. Hawkins is my 3rd favorite behind Blain and Mac.
We are a third through, and I am enjoying this a great deal. Nothing too horror-ish yet though. Give it time.
Anna just tried escaping from Dillon and Poncho stopped her bitch ass. We have now seen the Predator’s point of view 3 or 4 times. Billy is spooked. Arnold really needs to hit the gym. Dutch asks Billy what is wrong, and Billy says that there is something in the trees. Anna goes to pick up a big tree limp carefully while everybody is focused. Billy decides that it’s nothing major. Anna hits Hawkins and makes her escape. Hawkins catches her. Then the Predator in his sweet camo kills Hawkins. Goddamnit! Poncho shows up and sees the blood trail which leads to a pile of organs. Poncho is asking Anna what the hell happened. She says that the jungle came alive and took him. Dillon calls bullshit. His radio and weapon are still there, and Dillon says the same thing happened to Hopper.
By the way, Blain has an MTV shirt on, back when MTV was relevant. Hawkins is already hung up an extremely tall tree. Blain just got taken out, shot through the chest. Mac sees it get away so he starts shooting, and grabs the minigun. Now the whole crew is just unleashing a beautiful blaze of firepower. Wow, that was amazing. So much ammo was wasted there. The ammo they just used in that minute was more ammo than Rick’s group has used all series in Walking Dead. Poncho comes back to say they found nobody or blood. Dutch is confused by how Blain’s exit wound was the way it was. Anna rubs her hands on a leaf-covered in green Predator blood.
Mac has fortified camp with claymores. He says that Blain was his friend and is taking this pretty hard. 2 out of my 3 favorites are dead. Damnit. Mac drank from the flask and set it on Blain’s chest and said goodbye. Anna has some neon green pants now. The Predator shut down his camo, healed himself, and reloaded his gun. Dutch just said expendable again. Mac tells them how the eyes disappeared. Billy admits to being scared of whatever it is. Mac said nothing could have survived what he laid down for gunfire. Mac is talking to himself.
A flare and claymore go off. Mac is on the attack. He’s got it….a pig. The bitch tried to run yet again. Blain’s body is gone and went right past the tripwires. Dutch says that this hunter is using the trees, which is what Billy said awhile ago. He asks Anna what she saw, and now she speaks English and says that it’s like a chameleon. Dutch cuts her restraints. Dillon wants to get to the rendezvous point, and Dutch wants to make a stand now or nobody is gonna make it back to the chopper, per Arnold’s great accent. Sooo yeah, this is like Aliens, always about taking a stand. Carl Weathers is shirtless and almost as jacked as Arnold, damn.
They just set traps, pulled down some trees. They are waiting to trap this fucker. Mac is shaving again. Mac just cut himself being clumsy. Why the fuck does Anna talk now so much? She is talking about how in her village, they used to have a problem with this thing. Fuck her. Dillon is a dick and asks Dutch if he’s going to use cheese next as a trap/lure. Dutch appears to be using himself as bait, I think. Sure enough, it came from behind him, got caught in the net, and escaped. Dillon just saw the Predator uncloaked. Poncho got hit by a trap of there’s, so he is hurt. Mac and Dillon are both on the hunt. Mac is singly Long Tall Sally.
Mac sees the Predator in the distance and he wrangles Dillon so they both see it. Dillon is gonna flush it out, and Mac has a score to settle. Mac is crawling, then we see the infamous 3 red dots on his arms, and now his head, and BOOM. Mac is dead. Bloody hell. I’m on team Dutch at this point. Dillon finds a dead Mac. Dillon hears voice sin his head like he’s Randy Orton. Dillon sees the Predator, shoots at it, and it shoots his right arm off. It then lifts him off the ground and we presume that he is dead. Billy is staying back with a machete, carving his chest and is ready to dance. Dutch and Anna are trying to get Ponch to safety. There was a loud blood-curdling scream.
Predator shoots Ponch, then shoots Dutch while kicking the gun out of Anna’s hand. He screams for her to get to the choppa. Oh man! Dutch slip and slides down a cliff and ends up going down some waterfalls. Hopefully, the Predator don’t go chasing waterfalls. Hopefully, he sticks to the rivers and the lakes that he’s used to. When he was falling, he had a lot of steam pouring from him. That shot looked so 80’s bad, it was amazing. Dutch crawled out the muddy embankment. The Predator followed and his camo is shitting the bed. He doesn’t see Dutch due to the mud masking his body temp.
We see the Predator, take aim at something with the red dots and aim from his shoulder. I can’t tell if that was the coolest or goofiest thing that I have seen all day. I will go with coolest, it’s been a slow day. Dutch makes the observation that it couldn’t see him, like he’s John Cena. Dutch is setting up traps, traps that look a little unrealistic. Predator just fucked up Billy’s corpse. Dutch just made a homemade bow and arrow. This is all so classic. The Predator has quite the collection of skulls.
Only 15 minutes to go.
Dutch has covered himself in mud. He lit a torch and let out an absolutely ridiculous primal scream. I adored it. Dutch is scouting for awhile. The Predator is right next to Dutch. This is hilarious. Dutch is about to go Rambo, and he does. Fantastic. He pissed off the Pred so now he’s just firing away and we have fireworks basically. Dutch is just scramming. But Pred is hurt as is Dutch. Ohhhh shit, are we about to have a face-off. Dutch is hiding under a tree log, and the Predator is walking across it. And Dutch just chucked a spear. Yup. Dutch falls in some water, and the mud has washed off. Sir, you are fucked. Predator instantly finds Dutch and pins him up against a tree. But then he drops Dutch and walks away. The Predator is undoing all of his stuff, his gun and helmet. Dutch calls him one ugly mother fucker.
Here we go, 1 on 1. Dutch hits him with a limb, and he gets backhanded for his effort. The Predator wanted to display his cocky dominance. He is just working Dutch repeatedly with hits. Dutch lures him under his trap from earlier. The Predator stop and he observes the trap and outsmarts Dutch. Hahaha. But the backup trap worked. The huge log falls on the Predator, and Dutch rests for a second, but that log is still moving. Predator is bleeding badly, and Dutch was going to bask it’s head in with a rock. Predator opens up this wrist guard and puts in some buttons and lets out a devilish laugh of a human. Yup, everything is getting blown the fuck up. The chopper has Anna and it sees the explosion. With everything cleared out, the Chopper was easily able to find him. Anna is crying for some reason, and Dutch looks tired. They ride off in the choppa.
End Film
I loved this film in case you couldn’t tell. It was more action than horror, but so very enjoyable. I loved the cast, and everybody had a chance to develop their characters, and that is important. The jungle was a perfect locale. Arnold in one of his best roles.
Final rating: 8.0
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Twentieth Century Fox
- Lawrence Gordon Productions (as A Gordon-Silver-Davis Production)
- Silver Pictures (as A Gordon-Silver-Davis Production)
- Davis Entertainment (as A Gordon-Silver-Davis Production)
- Amercent Films (produced in association with)
- American Entertainment Partners L.P. (produced in association with)
- Estudios Churubusco Azteca S.A.
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