The Predator (aka Predator 6)

Pawn Of The Pred

The Predator (aka Predator 6)
2018 USA/Canada Directed by Shane Black
UK cinema release print.

Well this was a bit of a nice surprise.

I’ve never really been much into the Predator franchise, it has to be said. I saw each of them in the cinema once when they were released, starting when the first film debuted back in 1987 and... I may have seen the two entries I quite liked a second time on VHS or DVD (depending on when they went to home video). I remember getting quite enraged as a 19 year old when Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared to outrun the shockwave of a small nuclear explosion (or some such) in the first one. Any credibility flew out the window at that point although, I have to say, the film is due a revisit since I was maybe not appreciative of the action movie format (something I wasn’t really into at the time) as not actually having to be credible as a real world event (the fact that I loved Jason Statham as The Transporter would indicate a subtle rehabilitation in that area, on my part).

So, the only two I felt were half good enough to revisit were Predator 2 (which at least put the Predator in an urban environment I could relate to, other than a jungle) and the first, much better, Alien Vs Predator movie, despite the enraging continuity errors. Although the studio managed to totally ruin that offshoot from the franchise by following it up with a “beyond dull” teenage slasher film of a sequel which just happened to have an Alien and a Predator in it (the only really outstanding or noteworthy thing about the whole charade of Alien Vs Predator: Requiem was Brian Tyler’s excellent score).

Anyway, Shane Black’s new entry into the series, The Predator, is actually a lot better than at least four of those previous movies and, despite having terrible trailers, actually reminded me why I like Shane Black as a screenwriter in the first place (he directed this one too... not to mention played one of the original team in the very first Predator movie). Now, there are some bad things about this, for sure, but they never really detract from the main mission of a lot of films with big box office expectations like this... it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

The film centres on a government sniper whose mission goes very wrong after a Predator crashes on Earth, right on top of him and his targets. The sniper has the unlikely name of Quinn McKenna and he’s played here by an actor I’ve kinda liked in everything I’ve seen him in... Boyd Holbrook. After mailing some high tech Predator stuff he acquires early on to his autistic son, living with his ex-wife, for safekeeping, he is picked up by a Predator hunting squad and is going to be the scapegoat for the deaths of his unit since a patsy is needed. So he goes into a prisoner transport van where he meets a complete load of nutters... literally, none of these would be great customers for counselling... who laugh at him until the Predator that is still alive breaks out of captivity to look for... something I’m not going to tell you about in this hopefully spoiler free review. Meanwhile, the main female lead of the film, scientist Casey Bracket (played by Olivia Munn) is called in because she ‘knows biology’. There’s kind of a plot hole here in terms of why she would need to be recruited and then also need to be sillenced after the Predator breaks out but... who cares, like I said, it’s kind of fun. So Casey and Quinn hook up with the guys in the bus... who make The Dream Team look positively sane... and they try to get to Quinn’s little boy while avoiding death by both government agency and alien before said alien turns up at Quinn’s son’s house. However, there are bigger things happening and the story is nowhere near as simplistic as the previous films in the series so... I don’t want to give any surprises away here.

And it’s an entertaining, if a little messy in some places, piece of filmmaking. The script and especially the dialogue from Black is exceptional and quick fire and all the actors tend to gel with each other really well. The bunch of nutters from the bus deliver the typical Black, rapid fire dialogue and with such a pace that they make The Marx Brothers look positively sedate by comparison in some scenes. Casey is written a little bit like a male character wearing a skirt, to an extent but.... I have known women like this so I’m cutting the writer a little slack here.

Also, a big shout out to Jacob Tremblay as Quinn’s son Rory. Sure he’s a typical Shane Black character in the sense that, if Shane Black writes a movie it’s usually got a kid and some Christmas scenes in it but... in this case, he does become a big mover and shaker in this film with a lot to do. Oh... and for all those of you waiting for a Christmas scene to turn up in this... he's switched it to another festive occasion here... although, again, I’m not saying which one.

So, the film is chock full of humour and a lot of action but it never quite gets to the point where the hectic nature of the pacing... and it really is hectic and chaotic folks, make no mistake... causes you to want to rest your head in your hands for a minute or two. It’s absolutely not boring, for sure and, yeah, doesn’t quite outstay its welcome... although the ‘sequel positioning’ last scene may be just a bit too much for some.

Another thing the film is full of is gory violence... but it’s not fetishising the severity of its blood letting the way a strong horror movie might. This is strong violence but it’s pretty much always treated in a carefree or throwaway manner and... that’s a nice approach. Some of the stronger stuff (probably stronger than any of its predecessors in terms of visceral thrills) is ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ quick and this adds a certain level of credibility and consequence to the on-screen action. It’s a nice way of doing it and this ‘matter of fact’ level of violence is refreshing in a big budget, Hollywood movie, I think.

Now, I said the film was messy and... well it is. The follow through from one sequence to another jumps about a bit. For instance, the three plot strands of Quinn, Casey and Rory all come together really easily with hardly any time passing (although the mailman with that package must be lightening fast if this is truly the case) and it seems like some bizarre coincidence that they suddenly all seem to be taking place in the same area of America. Indeed, there was more than one scene where characters turned up in the other character’s backyard, so to speak, without hardly any time seeming to have passed at all between strands of the story. It disd jump me out of the movie a couple of times, I can tell you that.

Again, though, I can forgive the director and editor for this because they’ve delivered a really entertaining sci-fi action yarn and, when the film does seem to be a little jumpy, it’s got some excellent glue holding it together. That glue being the beautiful throwback 1980s style score by composer Henry Jackman. Using themes and orchestration from Alan Silvestri’s scores for the first two movies, Jackman surprised me with a rich retro orchestral sound I haven’t heard much in a while (even from Silvestri himself). Alas, at the time of my writing this, no CD release seems to be in sight and I’m not paying out for a download, I can tell you that. Jackman really does a good job with this one, though, and it’s one of those films where the music lingers on with you for a day when you look back on it. It’s very appropriate to this glorious mess of a movie Black and his crew have crafted and I’m all for it.

So yeah, that’s pretty much it from me on this one. The Predator is a nice slice of action sci-fi with a lot of humour, violence and  great acting chemistry coming out of its celluloid ears. There’s even some nice scenes for dog lovers but... you know... spoilers. If you liked the previous film in the series then you should get a kick out of this one. It’s not exactly subtle but it will probably put a smile on your face every now and again and that’s no bad thing. Worth a look.

The Nice Guys

Of Nice And Men

The Nice Guys
2016 USA Directed by Shane Black
UK cinema release print.

I have to be up front here and say that I’m not the biggest fan of either of the two leads of The Nice Guys. In the case of Russell Crowe, that stems from some of his behaviour off screen when it comes to journalists and it’s nothing to do with his skill at the craft of acting, which he's obviously very good at and which really should be what I’m looking at with an unclouded view here, anyway. Especially since it seems to be a fact these days that any stories reported by various ‘news machines’ are either fabricated to cause sensation or are, at the very least, not often showing all the sides of a story. So I’ve been slowly going through a process of letting the guy off the hook over the last few years, as far as my appreciation of him as an artist is concerned, at any rate.

As for Ryan Gosling. Well, I’ve only seen him in Drive and, to be honest, although I was quite impressed with him in it, I really wasn’t the biggest fan of the movie and, again, it’s probably not something I should let put me off going to see another movie with him in. However, that’s how it is with these two actors and their effect on me and if I’d have only heard of the title of this movie and the principal leads, unfairly or not, you probably wouldn’t have gotten me into a cinema to see this one... that’s for sure.

However, I saw the trailer for this, which was quite engaging, and it also mentioned the writer/director of the movie and... that’s where I sat up to take notice. The Nice Guys is written by Shane Black, who is one of the all time great, modern screen writers with such classic, fun movies like the original Lethal Weapon movie, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and, yes, even Iron Man 3 to his name. He’s one of the few modern Hollywood scriptwriters I will bother giving some time to and this is the main reason why The Nice Guys was on my radar and why I got myself to a cinema to see it.

The other reason was because I’d heard some samples from John Ottman and David Buckley’s score a couple of weeks before and.... it sounded awesome. The trailer hadn’t managed to make me aware of the time period the film is set in before hearing these samples but the movie takes place somewhere in the mid to late 1970s (you’ll notice things like Jaws 2 playing at the local cinema in the film) and the score certainly highlights this with an amazingly funky, seventies cop show aesthetic which wouldn’t be out of place in an old episode of Starsky And Hutch, to be honest with you.

But how was the actual movie... asides from the excellent score?

Well, it was exactly what I would expect from a Shane Black movie, to be honest. A pretty darn good, fun time at the cinema with some characters who, although you probably won’t be able to identify with them, will certainly have you rooting for them as the plot thickens throughout the movie and they find themselves more in jeopardy at every twist and turn. Black’s camera eye is absolutely perfect with some great shots and a lot of his, almost trademark, zooms across the city landscape but the chemistry between the two principals is pretty great and, coupled with Black’s absolutely beautiful script, the two work absolutely brilliantly together.

Crowe and Gosling play tough guy Jackson Healy and, not so tough, private detective Holland March, who find themselves caught up in a web of big corporation treachery, starting off with the death of ‘adult’ movie star Misty Mountains... a death scene which looks like it was ripped straight off the cover of my old 1970s Panther edition of J. G. Ballard’s novel Crash. As the two try to find another of the women who starred with Misty in a certain ‘experimental movie’ which actually plays an important part of the plot, the two steal the show in a series of set pieces and comedy routines which will have you laughing out loud. In fact, it was only when Gosling goes into as much of an ‘homage’ to an old Abbott and Costello routine as the director thinks he can get away with, that I realised that Crowe is playing the ‘straight man’ and Gosling is playing the ‘funny guy’. Of course, being as it’s Shane Black, he layers the characters with a lot more depth and, dare I say it, pathos... and this stops the two characters becoming too much like cyphers for old time Hollywood comics. He does manage to indulge himself in the writing without doing any damage to the credibility of the characters, though, so that really helps and, as you can imagine, the movie zips along at high speed.

Another element which helps keep the movie afloat is the awesome actress Angourie Rice, who plays Holland’s daughter Holly. She is the light of reason and sanity in her dad’s world and Rice really does an amazing job with this character throughout the running time. Of course, Black is no stranger to having credible and gutsy teenagers in his scripts. It was a strong element in almost all of those movies I mentioned earlier and something of a cliché for him as a writer. Of course, the film is full of clichés but it reminded me a lot of Stephen Sommers’ version of The Mummy in some respects. As in that the film is very aware of itself. It knows it’s milking every cliché and, doing it quite stylishly, but it’s also not afraid to let the audience know it’s in on the joke. It knows the audience is going to see things way before they happen... the villain of the piece is very obvious when that character first appears on screen... but it’s kind of the point, I think. Black is very clear about foreshadowing a lot of the things which will happen later on in the movie and he wants the audience to be free to be thinking about other things rather than the story elements, I suspect. Either way, it makes for a very entertaining ride so I really don’t care too much that a lot of the movie is quite obvious... it just seems to work well.

Now, I can see why the box office isn’t as great as might be expected on this one. The two anti heroes aren’t exactly role models and, although the film doesn’t feel exactly anticlimactic (even with a slightly awkward couple of epilogues to the main action to round the movie off), I think it maybe could have done with souping up in the action department a little more in a couple of scenes. Maybe a car chase moment would have been nice.

That very minor grumble aside, though, I would absolutely recommend The Nice Guys to anyone who is a fan of modern, action cinema. And it’s also nice to see people like Kim Basinger and Gil Gerard on our screens again... although I was too caught up in the one liners to actually spot Buck Rogers in the movie but... I will go back to take another look for him when this one comes out on Blu Ray. A terrific picture, some solid and very fun performances, nice and definitely not confusing editing and a terrific score. Not much to not like in this one and definitely the best time at the cinema this week, I reckon. Catch it there while you can.

Iron Man Three

Through A Glass Starkly

Iron Man Three
USA/China 2013
Directed by Shane Black
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Tiny, slight but sharp, splinters of 
spoilers working towards the heart of this review.

Please Note: The posters advertising this movie refer to the title as Iron Man 3 whereas, on the actual print of the film I saw playing at UK cinemas last week, it was definitely Iron Man Three... which is how I will refer to it in this review. 

You know, I really have always liked screenwriter Shane Black’s work a heck of a lot. Specifically, I loved his writing on the first Lethal Weapon movie, The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. When he got his directing gig on another gem he’d written (adapted from an old Mike Shayne adventure) called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I was blown away all over again. I think this guy is a true artist when it comes to popular culture and I look forward to him getting his Doc Savage movie off the ground (as long as it’s set sometime in the thirties that is). Which is why I kinda regret some of the things that I feel I need to write here to give Iron Man Three a fair shake of the stick.

I also really loved the first Iron Man movie. I think it’s certainly one of the best two or three super-hero movies ever made and it delivers some serious and sometimes morally challenging ideas with the grace, delivery and style of a 1930s screwball comedy, especially in the scenes of dialogue between Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr) and Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). I couldn’t say enough good things about that first movie when it was initially released and that’s not really changed in terms of the first one now. The second movie though... well the Stark/Potts relationship took a backseat for the most part and ultimately, I felt kind of let down by it and, though it pains me to say it, I feel the same about Iron Man Three in some regards.

Now please don’t get me wrong here... I thought Iron Man Three, the fifth film to feature Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man (so it’s really Iron Man 5 if you’re counting people!) had some fantastic stuff in it and some of Shane’s writing in the smaller, dialogue filled sequences is absolutely brilliant. In fact, on paper, there’s really not much not to like. The main title character is changed by the events of this movie, which may well have some sort of impact in future films and some new concepts are introduced such as not having to be in the Iron Man suit to be able to pilot it, for one, and then the next logical jump from that being that you can command a whole army of empty suits into your personal crack unit... that was a nice idea (although how they top this kind of thing in future movies I don’t know).

It’s absolutely filled to the brim with some nice moments such as Happy (played again by the director of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, Jon Favreau) being addicted to the TV show Downton Abbey and the brilliant portrayal of The Mandarin by Ben Kingsley which, if you know as little about the screen incarnation of this character as I did, will be quite a pleasant surprise to you when Tony Stark’s character gets to met him in the flesh. The movie also deals with concepts such as a lead character who inadvertently makes his own demons (which I think is a road we’ve kind of been down on before with Iron Man but it seems to work pretty well here) and also dealing with the psychological consequences of the heroic “save and fall” that Tony Stark pulled off in the fourth Iron Man film, The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble). This is all good stuff and there’s enough good writing on show to tie everything from Tony Stark’s past screen exploits together in a neat and appropriate package, which is just what Shane Black does.

I think the main problems, for me, were the deadly dull bits between the strong dialogue sequences and the sometimes not so kick ass action sequences... and also the ongoing issue that you need to keep having foes who are able to take on Iron Man and try to get them as credible as you can within the silver screen edition of the Marvel Universe that nobody questions it. It was always done fairly “real world” by using people with technically brilliant weapons or weaponised armour in the first two movies, but here Shane Black takes a more organic, “more human than human” approach with ex Neighbours TV soap star Guy Pearce playing a scientist who has invented a drug to give people the ability to grow limbs back (The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man really needs to work with this guy, I think) and also to turn them into either super-powered villains or, in some cases, powerful bombs. I guess this could have been handled credibly in a kind of “4-colour-Cronenberg” kind of way but, alas, the flashy, orange CGI work and over the top nature of the super-powered beings in this did seem to scratch a little at the credible surface of even a movie that has characters such as Iron Man running around in them. I guess, since The Avengers, all bets are off when it comes to credibility of the antagonists but I would have preferred him to face a more realistic set of villains in this one. I guess I can see why they felt they needed to do this, though.

The editing was something I lament on this movie, especially in a long battle towards the end of the story (which is where most of the action is located anyway... towards the end of the film). I did have trouble following the speed of the cuts and found placing the shots which flashed before my eyes in this sequence into some kind of coherent order fairly challenging, to be fair. As a result, the final fight in the movie didn’t really hit any emotional high points for me (which are often best done in isolation anyway) and I did find some of the footage kinda incomprehensible as I tried to follow along. And despite that, I still feel the movie needed about 20 - 30 minutes of judicious pruning in certain areas when it comes down to it. A shorter, tighter film may have worked better.

Another weakness of these particular Marvel branded movies is, of course, the consistency of the musical scores...

Marvel have done a heck of a lot of things right in the last five years or so when it comes to the specific subset of the Marvel Universe films they are bringing out as opposed to films series like Spider-Man and X-Men from other studios. They’ve gone for mostly great scripts, well thought out choices of director (Kenneth Branagh for Thor for instance, was one of a few strokes of genius) and they are inhabiting all these movies with a strong set of well established, “serious” actors who lend a certain amount of weight to their roles and who are not, as often happens, ignoring the ensemble nature of the way the characters all need to work together. This is all good stuff, of course.

Why then, are they completely compromising all that by not giving each subset of heroes who make up The Avengers their own, string of signature scores? Take this particular sequence of Iron Man films, for instance. We’ve had three stand alone Iron Man movies (not including The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers within this example, because it just makes the water muddier when it comes to music) and three separate composers scoring each one with completely different leitmotifs for the characters. Seriously, people, we had Ramin Djawadi, John Debney on the second and now Brian Tyler on the third... all of them are excellent composers and all of them have done brilliant and appropriate scores for these films... but none of them match up with each other. Why?

The only stab Marvel made at musical continuity was getting Captain America: The First Avenger composer Alan Silvestri back for The Avengers, but this didn’t do much justice for the Hulk, Thor and Iron Man characters in terms of melodic value and binding the characters together with an integration of those specific melodies. So Iron Man Three does, unfortunately, continue the trend of completely ignoring the musical continuity of the character in every way except style (there’s usually a lot of percussion in the Iron Man movies, for sure).

Having moaned about all that, though, and my general dissatisfaction with certain elements of the film... there are still a lot of really great scenes throughout the running time which are more than worth paying the price of admission for. I’ve already mentioned Ben Kingsley’s scene stealing performance as... well, anyway, his few but amazing scenes. In addition to this you have the Tony/Pepper scenes still fairly sharp and witty in the dialogue and you also have a teenage character for some of the movie who really reminds us that, although it’s never really in great shape, Tony Stark does have a heart and is a real human being who is trying to do the right thing. And I still love the character’s arrogance and the way that his self awareness of his personality informs the audience that you can’t take this guy at what’s showing on the surface... a real testament to Rob Downey Jr’s continued excellence at playing this, and many other, characters.

So I’m done with this one. It’s not the best but even so, it’s a heck of a ride and although you might find yourself dissatisfied with certain sequences, there’s a hell of a lot of good stuff on show and the director, production team and studio should feel proud that they’ve been able to deliver an above average super-hero movie again. It’s not that easy to do.

One last thing... this film continues the trend of the movies having an additional scene after the last drop of the end credits play out... and it’s pretty cool and I was pleased to see one of my favourite living actors sharing some screen time with Robert Downey Jr again. Let’s just say that, if you were a fan of the last movie starring this character... you will want to stay seated for this last, little sequence.