PREDATOR 2 - DVD review

Let's see. Where were we? Oh, yes. It was 1987, and the Predator had just dispatched Carl Weathers and the governor of Minnesota before being cornered by Big Arnold near a river in the Central American jungles. And we thought that was the end of the big fella. The Predator, I mean, not Big Arnold. But, no, it wasn't. Any time you've got an enormously popular action thriller like "Predator," you've got to have a sequel. Thus, "Predator 2" came to the screen in 1990.

This time the creature is busying himself in Los Angeles, nothing new to the adventure genre. After all, Tarzan left the jungles for the Big Apple. King Kong effected a transition and climbed the Empire State Building. Even the T-Rex from "Jurassic Park" made it to the mainland to terrorize a metropolis. Only now, the Predator doesn't have Schwarzenegger to deal with; nor does he have director John McTiernan ("Die Hard," "The Hunt for Red October") to guide him through his paces. Worse, the critter doesn't have the spectacular scenery and gorgeous cinematography of the original movie to maintain our interest. Instead, the thing is being chased through the city streets by Danny Glover, one of my favorite people but no match for the characters of the first movie and a helpless victim of the sequel's stale script.

If you recall, the Predator creature is from another planet, coming to Earth centuries ago to hunt and choosing to hang out for most of that time in the jungles of Central America. I suppose he figured there was more game there for him to hunt. Anyway, tiring of the rain forests, he (or another of his kind; it isn't made clear just yet) decides to move to the urban jungles to find his trophies, which include human skulls and various parts of the human anatomy.

The critter is a perfect hunting machine and butt-ugly to boot. He sees with thermal-image vision, meaning he senses body heat, and he can bend light so that his physical structure is mostly invisible to his prey. Seems an unfair advantage, given that he's also amazingly strong and agile, with extra-keen hearing and uncanny intelligence. We're told he's a hunter from a race of hunters, and now we're the hunted.

The movie begins in 1997, ten years after Big Arnold's encounter with the beast. But it doesn't start with the beast. The movie's opening sequence depicts a war between the Los Angeles Police Department and a pair of rival Colombian and Jamaican drug gangs. This fight is so badly staged, I thought at first it was intended as parody. I expected a director to yell "cut" at any moment. With the police unable to make any headway in the battle, Danny Glover shows up as Police Lieutenant Mike Harrigan and single-handedly kills every bad guy in sight. Well, almost; and without the help of his usual partner, Mel Gibson, to boot. To complicate matters, it seems a few of baddies are hiding inside a building, but before Harrigan can get to them they are all mysteriously killed. (We know it was by the Predator, but the police don't know it.) The creature, you see, likes to give his victims a fighting chance, so he only goes after humans who are armed. Sporting fellow.

Harrigan wants to find out who killed the heavies before he got to them, but his bosses on the force, Heinemann (Robert Davi) and Pilgrim (Kent McCord), won't let him proceed with his investigation because the feds get involved. Special Agent Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) of the DEA leads a group of federal agents assigned to the case, who push Harrigan aside. Harrigan, being a typical movie cop, is a hotheaded maverick who refuses to be shoved into a corner and, accordingly, he disobeys orders at every turn to get to the bottom of things.

As you've probably already guessed, and, mind you, the film's only a few minutes in, the government knows all about the Predator and wants to capture it to learn the secrets of its weaponry. Shades of "Aliens" here. If you're going to steal ideas for a film, steal from the best. But the feds find Harrigan and his team of cops almost as much a trial to them as the monster they're after. Harrigan's force, understand, consists of the usual types: Danny (Rubin Blades), a longtime, trusted friend; Leona (Maria Conchita Alonso), a tough cookie; and Jerry (Bill Paxton, from the aforementioned "Aliens"), a brash, young newcomer. You couldn't find more hackneyed characters in a movie if you looked high and low.

In fact, "Predator 2" sports an amazing number of good actors thrown away in dead-end roles, the only memorable part played by the late Morton Downey, Jr., as an odious news reporter, a role that so well fit his personality he didn't need to act. Meanwhile, bullets fly, sharp pointy objects are hurled, body parts sail in all directions, and Harrigan blunders from one ridiculous situation to another. For what it's worth, the movie actually picks up a little tension in the last half hour or so, but it's a long haul getting there; and once the climax finally comes, it's so contrived it spoils everything that went before it. This poor film can't get anything right.

Video:
The first "Predator" movie had the lush greens and golds of a tropical rain forest going for it. "Predator 2" has the concrete, steel, and glass of a big city. You figure it out. Still and all, the video looks OK, given that it doesn't have much of anything beautiful to reproduce. The screen size measures an ordinary anamorphic widescreen, 1.74:1 across a conventional television set. The picture is somewhat on the dark side, owing to the nature of the subject matter, and it's a bit grainy, too. Shadows don't reveal much inner detail, with colors slightly muted. Deep blacks don't so much heighten dimensionality as obscure particulars.

Audio:
The sound, projected via Dolby Digital 5.1, is very dynamic, very loud, very clear, very sharp, and very bright. This is fine for clarifying dialogue but doesn't do a lot to make the blaring, blasting, largely obnoxious music that plays intermittently any better. There's some good surround information fed monaurally to the rear speakers, voices echoing, bullets ricocheting, that sort of thing.

Extras:
The disc provides only a few bonus items, and none of them are worth much of one's time. The two main things are promotional featurettes created at the time of the film's production, a making-of promo that lasts about five minutes and a creature-design promo, "Creating the Ultimate Hunter," that last about three minutes. In addition, there are twenty-eight scene selections; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and English and Spanish subtitles.

Parting Shots:
As far as sequels go, this one proves the case for quitting while you're ahead. "Predator 2" tries to capitalize on a good-looking creature design but can't make up its mind what to do with it. The plot is shopworn, the ending is muddled, almost sentimentalized, the actors are wasted, and the only serious action comes much too late for anyone to care. About the best that can be said for the film is that it's preferable to "Python 2," a damning with faint praise if ever there was one. Violence, gore, sex, nudity, and profanity provide the film its requisite R rating.