This review is a part of my Bill Paxton Project, an attempt to watch and review every piece of film the man did during his lifetime.
Ah, Predator 2. I remember what a huge fan I was as a kid of the first film. Still am, actually. I was 16 years old when the sequel came out. At the time, I had my own cable access TV show through my high school (for those not old enough to remember this, think YouTube, but just for your town). Because we did movie reviews, studios often sent us press kits. The press kit they sent for Predator 2 included a videotape with a trailer and a behind-the-scenes featurette. Man, I watched that tape a thousand times, thinking this was going to be so much cooler than the first one.
Well, life teaches us all disappointment at some point, doesn’t it?
Predator 2 is set 10 years after the first one, and brings the ultimate killing creature to downtown Los Angeles, where it first kills a bunch of drug thugs, then goes to war with the local cops and a team of government spooks. Danny Glover stars as Lt. Harrigan, and he runs the local cops. Except he doesn’t, because he has a captain (played by Kent McCord of “Adam 12” and “Galactica 1980”). He really runs the show. Except he doesn’t, because he answers to Robert Davi. And nobody talks back to Robert Davi. Ruben Blades plays another cop, but gets offed pretty quickly. Maria Conchita Alonso is there too.
And in comes Bill Paxton. Paxton plays Jerry Lambert, a loose-cannon, wise-cracking hot dog who joins the team (see why I love Paxton? He knows what works for him.) Paxton tells some off-color jokes and makes an awful, dated, sexist remark about Alonso’s character being a “bitch on the rag”. Wow, the nineties. Then he gets killed by the Predator on a subway, finally fulfilling his destiny as the only actor ever to have been killed by a Terminator, an Alien, and a Predator. Respect.
Oh, the government spooks. They’re led by typically unhinged Gary Busey, who’s backed up by “Firefly” vet Adam Baldwin in an early role. Busey gets blown up and then beheaded by the Predator, but Baldwin survives to fight Predators another day. Or, you know, become buddies with Nathan Filion. Whatever works. Danny Glover finally does kill the Predator aboard its own ship, but then finds himself surrounded by a whole posse of Predators. This posse of intergalactic hunters obviously decides Harrigan is a righteous homie, and they not only let him survive, they toss him a 1715 flintlock pistol as a souvenier.
Ooh, by the way, one of the awesome nerd points about watching this movie is that an Alien xenomorph skull can be seen on a trophy wall in the Predator ship. This establishes that both movie series are part of a shared universe. But, wait, does that mean Bill Paxton’s character in this film is a distant grandfather to his character in Aliens? His name is Jerry Lambert. In Alien (1979), Veronica Cartwright’s character was named Lambert. Are they related? If so, were Lambert and Hudson (Paxton’s character in Aliens), like, cousins? The mind reels in nerdery.
Let’s call this flick fun, but dated. Inferior to the original, but still fun to watch.
