[Review] The Predator (4.5/10)

Title - The Predator
Studio - 20th Century Fox
Starring - Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane, Yvonne Strahovski
Writer - Shane Black
Director - Shane Black
Release - 14 September 2018

When a movie does not start well, it rarely ends well. In this case, the movie started a little bit cheesy, and ended with a big bowl of cheese.

It's really sad to see how a Shane Black movie has failed this much, and this is right after his brilliant and the best movie of his tiny career, The Nice Guys.

Sure, Iron Man 3 was not a great Marvel film but it was still a decent film. I would have thought he would have been able to bring that type of sensibility to another big franchise, and he was part of the crew that started this franchise as well from back in 1987. But the result was a super cheesy, full-on action genre rather than the horror-thriller that the original was.

There were actually some good parts. And they were not enough. One was the Black's brand of wicked humour like when Holbrook's character promises to catch Munn jumping off the bus. The other was introducing and creating the chemistry between the team members, which was one of the highlights - albeit weak.

Holbrook was a bit of a miscast, I thought, but all the actors played their part really well; including Tremblay and Strahovski.

But then came the plot holes from Black's writing, which again has never been an issue. From Holbrook swallowing the metallic ball to that horrible ending where two guys casually walked up to the supposed dangerous box; a lot of things just did not make sense.

Also, I believe there had been a whole lot of censors for this movie for us in Brunei. A lot of the deaths were very vaguely portrayed, and since this movie is rated R, I am guessing many shots were too gruesome to put through. Which also could explain why that dog running after Tremblay suddenly disappeared.

I saw what Black tried to do with this movie - the final scene going back into the jungle just like the first movie. But execution wise, and in terms of his writing, there was just too much that were lacking.