Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Olivia Munn, Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Brian A. Prince, Yvonne Strahovski, Peter Shinkoda, Mike Dupond, Niall Matter, Javier Lacroix, Gabriel LabBelle, Nikolas Dukic, Garry Chalk.

Occasionally it is not what the film says at the time but what it can promise for the future which makes it an enjoyable feast to get your teeth into; admittedly cinema goers and film goers would prefer to see this happen on the first attempt, the climax of the film serenading those glued to their seats with a lullaby of further adventures to come, of the tale being even more dynamic, and in some cases, revealing more to the story and the character’s depth.

Sequels have always been big business, intermittently they break the bank, the audience hooked on the story-arc and progression of the central themes of the films, quite often though they break the heart, the story-line giving way to chasing down the pounds, dollars and the yen, nothing at that moment is more important it seems to the producers than getting their full weight in gold. One only has to look at the way the franchises of Back To The Future and Jaws work, one spawned a great series, worthy of the actor’s involved as their finest moments on screen, the other a series of more desperate plotlines that only had one thing in common with the extraordinary initial foray, the shark.

Unusually, The Predator sits between these two franchises, and with purpose. Bringing in Shane Black to write this sixth incarnation of the hunting beast is a sense of returning to the original grand roots explored in the Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster in 1987, a renewal, as opposed to the fairly lacklustre initial sequel and the understandably lame crossovers with the Alien franchise; a series of films that suffered the same fate after its dramatic and beautifully created original, and which has only just come back on board with the two prequels which explore the Alien mythology with greater effect.

Shane Black brings the pathos and humour back into style, the mix of tension and relief paced at the right moments and in one of the great stand-offs envisaged, between the Predator people have come to understand and this new hybrid, a new scale of dominating fear, the film’s first half is up there with the first Predator film and perhaps even the initial Alien encounter.

After that it is really about the set-up, the laying down of rules which hopefully will see Shane Black return in both writing and directing chairs. It really comes down to the fact that The Predator is arguably the film that should have followed the initial rumble in the jungle, written by someone who cares about the story-line, who understands the feelings of the fan base, and whilst some of the film’s second half could be seen as filler, what it builds up to is the trepidation that humanity is never safe, the allusion of the masked alien hunter a perfect allegory for big business and government, the more times you strike back at the capitalist game, the more it comes back to rip out your spinal cord, a bigger beast, a more devastating battle.

With great performances by Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane and Olivia Munn, The Predator is an enjoyable romp, a returning to form for one of the great action films of the 1980s, one that has found its purpose again.

Ian D. Hall