Predator (2018) - USA
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
The biggest problem with Shane Black’s latest reboot of “Predator” is coherency and with so much controversy surrounding the film in the midst of the #metoo movement, the film ended up as one big mess. With so much backstory and character development ended up on the cutting floor, the film despite containing a fairly ambitious script ends up being cliche and even at times laughable. Random events and characters suddenly appears and slowly destroying any emotional attachment the audience may have for the characters.
Boyd Holbrook headlines the feature and ends up left behind in terms of charisma and presence for the rest of the cast. Olivia Munn portray the strong heroine role, but loses out in the lack of any character development. For the ensemble cast of military guys (Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane) we get entertaining performance and play off between the group, but ultimately feels like it is from another better film.
All in all, “Predator” tries too hard to link up previous films and events in an attempt to create a money spinning franchise. Unfortunately it is a box office bomb and is unlikely to see its planned sequels made. We try to picture what kind of film, it should have been, but it ended up far to scratchy, disjointed and even as a mass entertainment, it fails to pass the mark. Some fun can certainly be had, however in this day and age, genre fans demand a lot more.
I rated it 5/10