Predator 2

"THIS is history" - Peter Keyes

Its 1991. Imagine you're five years old. You're looking for something to watch and you are leafing through your father's VHS tapes. You're a big fan of the Robocop action figures and the NES game. Then you see "Robocop 2" on the side of a tape. What you don't know is there's another movie before that one. You pop the tape in expecting to see Robocop.....but that's not what you get. What you get is one of the most violent, epic, opening sequences to an action movie ever. No introductions, no iconic theme song, no, we just get right into the action. Bullets and bodies flying. You've just stumbled upon PREDATOR 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLe_1SheJms

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Without going into detail about the first Predator movie, let's get to PREDATOR 2. The movie, set in 1997, opens with a gaggle of Columbian drug dealers led by El Scorpio (Henry Kingi - Vampires 1998) in a shootout with the LAPD. Tony Pope (Morton Downey Jr - Famous talk show host) reports live that the Columbian and Jamaican gangs have taken over the city and the cops are overmatched. Suddenly, Lt. Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover - Saw 2004) bursts on the scene while a Predator (Kevin Peter Hall - Harry & The Hendersons tv show) watches from the distance. His two officers Danny Boy (Ruben Blades - Once Upon A Time in Mexico 2003) and Leona (Maria Conchita Alonso - The Running Man 1987) along with Captain Pilgrim (Kent McCord - Adam 12 tv series) fill Mike in on the situation. Heroically Mike powers through the enemy line to drive El Scorpio and some of his boys inside their drug den. Captain Pilgrim and Danny tell Mike that Captain Heinemann (Robert Davi - License To Kill 1989) has given orders not to pursue as the DEA is on their way. Suddenly while Scorpio and his gang get packed for another shootout, the Predator makes his appearance leading Harrigan to ignore orders. When Harrigan's team gets there, all but Scorpio have been brutally murdered. Harrigan chases the bloodied Scorpio to the roof who freaks completely out upon seeing the Predator again before he's shot down by Mike. The team investigates and figures the Jamaicans did this, but Mike asks where they went. A very angry Heinemann brings Harrigan's team back to headquarters where the DEA contingent walk in. Special Agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey - Under Siege 1992) is in charge and his right hand man is Garber (Adam Baldwin - Independence Day 1996). They tell Harrigan politely to stay out of their way.

After the DEA leaves, a new officer is introduced to be part of Harrigan's team. The wise cracking, fast talking Jerry Lambert (Bill Paxton - Aliens 1986) who finds out right away Leona is not to be messed with. Next, the leader of the Columbians Ramon Vega (Corey Rand) is getting on with his girlfriend (Teri Weigel - Savage Beach 189) in his penthouse (definitely something you'd let your 5 year old watch right?) when a crew of Jamaicans attack! After killing Vega, they're also attacked and slaughtered one by one by the Predator. Harrigan's team investigates despite being ordered not to and find them brutalized just like the Columbians. Danny and Mike deduce that they definitely didn't attack each other, something else is going on. Keyes and his crew show up to give Harrigan a tongue lashing and forcefully tell him next time he won't be so forgiving. Will Harrigan and his crew take out the Predator, will Keyes beat him to it or will the Predator reign supreme? Watch PREDATOR 2 to find out.

[caption id="attachment_148595" align="alignnone" width="300"] "Let's dance"[/caption]

After the success of the first Predator movie, a sequel was pretty much a no-brainer. Jim and John Thomas came up with several ideas for another movie and 20th Century Fox liked the urban warfare idea. Its explained later in PREDATOR 2 that the alien species are drawn by heat and conflict, which makes 100 degree summer Los Angeles the perfect battleground. Stephen Hopkins had directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and the Thomas brothers wanted him to direct the sequel. One of the original ideas pitched by Hopkins was to have Patrick Swayze play Harrigan with the returning Governor Arnold to team up with. Arnold was indeed asked to be part of it but he wanted too much money. Movie producer Joel Silver then brought in his crew from Lethal Weapon, Gary Busey, Danny Glover and Steve Kahan to audition for Harrigan. As you could guess, they settled on Glover with Busey taking the role of Keyes.

[caption id="attachment_148589" align="alignnone" width="300"] "You ain't hiring Busey over me!!"[/caption]

The bread and butter of the movie is the acting. Danny Glover was used to playing the detective in Lethal Weapon's 1 and 2 and its ironic how his character was "getting too old" in those movies, but looked as spry as ever here. Gary Busey isn't over the top dramatic like he is in other movies, but he still has a powerful presence in PREDATOR 2. Robert Davi was the show stealer in License To Kill and The Goonies but was in a more reserved role here. Raul Blades as the laid back Danny Boy was the perfect compliment to the headstrong, emotional Harrigan. Maria Alonso was used to action after starring in The Running Man but she was perfect as the near-fearless Leona. Nearly everyone had at least one quotable line but as usual, the show stealer was Bill Paxton. Nearly everything he says was hilarious due to his delivery and that's common for a lot of his roles. Unfortunately, the Predator himself, Kevin Patrick Hall died of AIDS just 5 months after PREDATOR 2 was released. He could have been a big star well into the 90's.

Is there any gore in PREDATOR 2? Si, senor. We got buckets of blood, stabbings and gunshots. Even though a lot of the kills are off-screen or done in infrared (a nice touch giving the Predator's perspective), this is still a very bloody movie. Is it particularly scary? Not really. The problem with action/horror is that the action takes away the suspense. When Columbians, Jamaicans and other gangs are slaughtered one by one, its usually quick and easy to move on to the next one. Its not like The Green Inferno where you can marinate on one kill for a while, here its bing, bang, boom. Still, some of them are wonderful. Minor spoiler alert, the Pedro Cerrano lookalike who literally shoots everything he can possibly shoot in the high rise massacre scene with a big smile on his face might be one of the best parts of the movie.

[caption id="attachment_148590" align="alignnone" width="300"] Shootout MVP on the right[/caption]

So what about legacy? Since Fox owned the rights to the Alien franchise, they thought it would be funny to put a xenomorph skull amongst the Predator trophies at the end of PREDATOR 2. Naturally this led to fanfics and calls for a crossover. The first ended up being an Alien vs Predator video game that came out on the Super Nintendo in 1993 where you're a Predator beating the living daylights out of xenomorphs. That's right it was a good old fashioned aracde style Beat Em Up. Then a year later another game of the same name appeared on the Atari Jaguar. It was basically a Doom clone where you can play as a space marine, Predator or Xenomorph. Then in 2004, the movie Alien vs Predator was released with Lance Henriksen and Sanaa Lathan as the leads. A god-awful sequel to that called Alien vs Predator: Requiem came out in 2007. Another Alien vs Predator game came out on the PS3 in 2010 where you again play as a xenomorph, space marine or Predator in a 1st person shooter setting. Also in 2010, the Adrien Brophy movie Predators came out. More sequels and spinoffs were released with the latest being Predator: Badlands currently in theaters.

What makes PREDATOR 2 special is its difference from its predecessor. While Predator featured jacked up special forces soldiers pumped full of testosterone (Jesse "The Body" Ventura in particular), the sequel featured average joes so to speak thrust into a conflict they were ill-prepared for. At the end of the day, Columbian and Jamaican foot soldiers are still human, the Predator certainly is not. It gives a little bit of an origin story and shows that Predators aren't mindless killers, they pick and choose who they attack. If you're unarmed, there's no honor. If you're looking for an hour and forty-eight minutes of fun, watch PREDATOR 2. After all, good movies are Lambert's specialty.