Predator a baffling mess

The Predator (R16, 107 mins) Directed by Shane Black Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★

Is it a mistake to always dismiss 21st century remakes of beloved movies from a decade or three ago? Just because Robocop (2014), Total Recall (2012) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (2016) all stunk up the joint on their way to being irrelevant at best and just plain lousy at worst, surely that doesn’t mean every rebooted vision of a 1970s or 80s cult classic has to be terrible, does it?

Well, yes. And The Predator is here to prove it.

The 1987 original Predator is one of those you-just-had-be-the-rightage-at-the-time classics. And unfortunately for Shane Black’s 2018 film, I was. It was a Sunday night, Wellington’s old Manners St Hoyts was a hot mess of half-baked teens out for a preview of the new Schwarzenegger movie, and a cheer went up when the credit ‘‘creature effects’’ appeared on the screen. Because, as every 80s and 90s teen knows, when you put Arnie and a creature in the same film, the results are always epic. Two hours later, red-eyed and delirious, we poured out, knowing we had seen one of the true highwater marks of Arnie, 80s sci-fi and general kickassery. John McTiernan’s 1987

Predator really was that good. The critics, of course, didn’t get it at all.

So why bother with this reboot?

Well, co-writer and director Boyd Holbrook Shane Black was an actor in the original. Black is also a successful writer of some testosterone-drenched classics, including Lethal Weapon, who then moved on to direct Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3 and The Nice Guys. When Black announced he was making a new Predator film, it seemed as though the stars had finally aligned.

But no. The Predator isa baffling mess. Baffling in that there are a handful of scenes and sequences that seem to have come from a pretty good movie with plenty of action and a few decent laughs. Which really is the only bar this film has to clear. But in between those promising moments is every other damn thing this film gets spectacularly wrong.

In no particular order; the story is messy, convoluted and reliant on way too many contrivances and idiocies. Then there’s the edit, which seems to have left several important moments on the floor.

Black’s genius for idiosyncratic characters yelling inventive obscenities at each other is visible here, but the edit gives us no chance to ever believe in these people, or ever really lose ourselves in the story. The cast all have moments to shine. Black’s decision to have lead Boyd Holbrook

(Logan) team up with a bus full of ex-army psychiatric patients is a terrific idea. Tied to a simple and linear plot that might have led to

The Predator being worthy of its name. But the storyline on screen is a farrago of cul-de-sacs, partially realised ideas and incomprehensible motives.

The Predator is a lesson in exactly how to trash the memory of a risible, but loveable original.