Hi there my fellow creatures of the night!
It's 2:11 A.M. and I'm taking a break from my new novel (I'll tell you more about it later) to talk to you about a great film I recently watched. No, it's not an art film by Bergman, Herzog or Fellini, and it's not a porno either... It's a straightforward action film with a lot to offer and with a characteristic that action films almost never have: originality. I'm talking about Predator, possibly one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's finest films.
To quote the world's top film critic Mr. Roger Ebert, Predator is such a great action film because it flows through a near perfect dramatic turn: "It starts like Rambo (or to that effect Commando) and ends like Alien." True. But Predator's brilliancy does not stop at that.
Apart from the tremendously well done action scenes, great cinematography, the larger than life music score, jungle sequences (which according to Ebert are even better than those in Herzog's Fitzcarraldo), the brilliant and still up to date special effects, and the well achieved acting, Predator has a special quality to it that I have never seen on film before.
For those of you that don't know, Predator is a Science Fiction/Action/Horror Film about a group of US Army Commandos who are sent to the jungles of South America to rescue a Cabinet Minister from the hands of the guerrilla (Schwarzenegger stars as the leader of the group) but upon returning from their accomplished mission they run into an alien who hunts them one by one á la Most Dangerous Game, killing them for sport. And the alien is nothing less than an expert and near perfect hunter, as he is almost immune to gunshots, tremendously agile, invisible and has heat seeking vision (which means that the men are never out of his sight). So yes, he is the perfect hunter; "the ultimate enemy". But this time he's not fighting just anyone, he's fighting ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER as Major "Dutch" Schaefar, the best rescue commando in the entire world.
As a horror film, Predator is a standard slasher film with an excellent and never before achieved variant: The “Bad guy” aka Psycho-Killer (in this case and Alien or "Predator") is not facing a group of helpless teenagers in a fraternity or kids in a college camp, he is facing an elite rescue squad armed with machine guns and lead by the same man who single handedly killed an entire Army in "Commando", Wiped out an entire police unit in "The Terminator", Exterminated the Entire Chicago Mob in one day in "Raw Deal", disbanded the modern day equivalent of Al-Qaeda in "True Lies", and killed Satan himself in "End of Days"... a team led by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So yes, the villain does have his hands full on this one. "This time he picked the wrong man to hunt", says the tagline with much objectivity. Predator marks THE first time in the history of horror films where the villain faces a worthy adversary who can actually turn the tables on him and hunt him down with a real chance of beating him (no offense but Jamie Lee Curtis turning the tables of Michael Myers in Halloween H2O is not really what I'm talking about) in an effort to turn the Hunter into the Hunted.
And the outcome is near perfect. With all his comrades dead (killed one by one by the Predator) Dutch (Schwarzenegger) turns the tables on the Predator, discovers his weakness and hunts HIM down, finally fatally wounding him with a prefabricated trap and forcing him to activate his "self destruct" application, which blows him to pieces, effectively making Arnold Victorious.
So avoiding a standard slasher-like structure (where the group of teens accidentally kill off the villain at the end) Predator breaks genre and creates a new stanza in the Horror Film Poem, it finally provides the killer with a real rival; a person who can actually beat him and turn HIM into the Hunted one ("if it bleeds, we can kill it!" claims Schwarzenegger after he discovers that the Predator had been wounded).
Apart from being an excellent horror film with a great dramatic twist Predator is simply a brilliant movie that is not only deliciously entertaining, but also has a genuine quality to it that, if it had not been a studio feature (Studio features are generally disliked by "artsy festivals" and "art filmmakers"- don't ask me why but they hate them without even watching them- I'll talk about that in another article titled "Hollywood Vs. Art Film"), it would have probably won many awards at festivals.
So don't waste anymore time. Go buy or rent Predator and tell me how much you liked it. I guarantee you won’t regret it. It is one of the few serious Schwarzenegger films and possibly the best one.
I leave you know with a list of the best Schwarzenegger films with a respective rating and commentary.
I'll see you in the future,
"I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me."
Happy Hunting,
The WikiVampire
1.- Termiantor 2: Judgement Day 9.5 (one-of a kind display of special effects - a true work of art-)
2.- Conan the Barbarian 9.0 (one of the best music scores I have EVER heard in a feature - the other two are Little Women and the 13th Warrior).
3.- Predator 9.0
4.- Last Action Hero 8.5 (An excellent premise with a great genre spoof story)
5.- The Termiantor 8.5 (This is where it all started)
6.- Kindergarten Cop 8.0 (Sentimental Flick)
7.- Commando 7.5 (Simply THE best film for ONE-LINERS)
It's 2:11 A.M. and I'm taking a break from my new novel (I'll tell you more about it later) to talk to you about a great film I recently watched. No, it's not an art film by Bergman, Herzog or Fellini, and it's not a porno either... It's a straightforward action film with a lot to offer and with a characteristic that action films almost never have: originality. I'm talking about Predator, possibly one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's finest films.
To quote the world's top film critic Mr. Roger Ebert, Predator is such a great action film because it flows through a near perfect dramatic turn: "It starts like Rambo (or to that effect Commando) and ends like Alien." True. But Predator's brilliancy does not stop at that.
Apart from the tremendously well done action scenes, great cinematography, the larger than life music score, jungle sequences (which according to Ebert are even better than those in Herzog's Fitzcarraldo), the brilliant and still up to date special effects, and the well achieved acting, Predator has a special quality to it that I have never seen on film before.
For those of you that don't know, Predator is a Science Fiction/Action/Horror Film about a group of US Army Commandos who are sent to the jungles of South America to rescue a Cabinet Minister from the hands of the guerrilla (Schwarzenegger stars as the leader of the group) but upon returning from their accomplished mission they run into an alien who hunts them one by one á la Most Dangerous Game, killing them for sport. And the alien is nothing less than an expert and near perfect hunter, as he is almost immune to gunshots, tremendously agile, invisible and has heat seeking vision (which means that the men are never out of his sight). So yes, he is the perfect hunter; "the ultimate enemy". But this time he's not fighting just anyone, he's fighting ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER as Major "Dutch" Schaefar, the best rescue commando in the entire world.
As a horror film, Predator is a standard slasher film with an excellent and never before achieved variant: The “Bad guy” aka Psycho-Killer (in this case and Alien or "Predator") is not facing a group of helpless teenagers in a fraternity or kids in a college camp, he is facing an elite rescue squad armed with machine guns and lead by the same man who single handedly killed an entire Army in "Commando", Wiped out an entire police unit in "The Terminator", Exterminated the Entire Chicago Mob in one day in "Raw Deal", disbanded the modern day equivalent of Al-Qaeda in "True Lies", and killed Satan himself in "End of Days"... a team led by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So yes, the villain does have his hands full on this one. "This time he picked the wrong man to hunt", says the tagline with much objectivity. Predator marks THE first time in the history of horror films where the villain faces a worthy adversary who can actually turn the tables on him and hunt him down with a real chance of beating him (no offense but Jamie Lee Curtis turning the tables of Michael Myers in Halloween H2O is not really what I'm talking about) in an effort to turn the Hunter into the Hunted.
And the outcome is near perfect. With all his comrades dead (killed one by one by the Predator) Dutch (Schwarzenegger) turns the tables on the Predator, discovers his weakness and hunts HIM down, finally fatally wounding him with a prefabricated trap and forcing him to activate his "self destruct" application, which blows him to pieces, effectively making Arnold Victorious.
So avoiding a standard slasher-like structure (where the group of teens accidentally kill off the villain at the end) Predator breaks genre and creates a new stanza in the Horror Film Poem, it finally provides the killer with a real rival; a person who can actually beat him and turn HIM into the Hunted one ("if it bleeds, we can kill it!" claims Schwarzenegger after he discovers that the Predator had been wounded).
Apart from being an excellent horror film with a great dramatic twist Predator is simply a brilliant movie that is not only deliciously entertaining, but also has a genuine quality to it that, if it had not been a studio feature (Studio features are generally disliked by "artsy festivals" and "art filmmakers"- don't ask me why but they hate them without even watching them- I'll talk about that in another article titled "Hollywood Vs. Art Film"), it would have probably won many awards at festivals.
So don't waste anymore time. Go buy or rent Predator and tell me how much you liked it. I guarantee you won’t regret it. It is one of the few serious Schwarzenegger films and possibly the best one.
I leave you know with a list of the best Schwarzenegger films with a respective rating and commentary.
I'll see you in the future,
"I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me."
Happy Hunting,
The WikiVampire
1.- Termiantor 2: Judgement Day 9.5 (one-of a kind display of special effects - a true work of art-)
2.- Conan the Barbarian 9.0 (one of the best music scores I have EVER heard in a feature - the other two are Little Women and the 13th Warrior).
3.- Predator 9.0
4.- Last Action Hero 8.5 (An excellent premise with a great genre spoof story)
5.- The Termiantor 8.5 (This is where it all started)
6.- Kindergarten Cop 8.0 (Sentimental Flick)
7.- Commando 7.5 (Simply THE best film for ONE-LINERS)
