The Predator Movie Review - Imitation Games

Still from the trailer

The Predator
U/A: Action, Adventure, Horror
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay
Rating:

Shane Black's reboot of the successful Arnold Schwarzenegger starring franchise has a brand new cast and a stronger, smarter and deadlier monster-alien wreaking havoc -but the thrills thereof, are minimal. It's been 30 plus years since the original 'Predator' held sway over the Box-office and Black's attempt to rope in the Millennial generation for this one's potential success is a far more gamey attempt than a reasonable one.

The narrative opens with an alien spaceship crashing in the middle of the jungle, just when a U.S. military sniper, McKenna (Boyd Holbrook working hard to channelize Mel Gibson), is trying to take out a gang of narcos. The predator disappears into thin air and McKenna manages to salvage some of its state-of-the-art alien technology, which he promptly ships off to his spectrum afflicted genius son, Rory (Jacob Tremblay), back home in the States. The rest is a rerun of action cinema history minus the flair and power of yore.

Check out the trailer here:

With the monster being made visible from the first frame itself and their numbers increasing as the narrative moves forward, the suspense that held us in thrall in the original is sorely missing here. The addition of pitbull-like monster alien companions might make this effort showier but the overkill doesn't help much. The predators look every-bit like computer generated aliens employing a weaponry that fires much like the 'Star Wars' armory. There's hardly any imagination at play here. Black, who starred in the original as a trooper with bifocals, and co-wrote the screenplay of this film with Fred Dekker, plies on more funny moments than in the original though.

A biologist (Olivia Munn) and the team of Loonies (played by Rhodes, Key, Jane, Alfie Allen, and Augusto Aguilera) provide some fun moments but once the predatory monster gets its strength back all hell breaks loose, literally! The over-the-top excesses are really not much of a payoff here.

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