Author: Shmee

The Predator is back in its first solo outing since 2010.  What is different this time?  It is very silly.  I am not sure that is what Shane Black and co. were going for, but that is what we got.  Imagine a competently directed big budget SyFy Original film.  I am not saying it is as over the top as Sharktopus, but there are some tonal similarities.  For someone like me who enjoys that kind of thing, I had fun, but I can see fans of the franchise being let down.

As far as plot goes there isn’t a lot to talk about with The Predator.  A Predator lands and the government lead by Will Traeger (Sterling K. Brown) wants his stuff.  Complicating that is Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) and his elite Ranger squad are the first people to come in contact with this new Predator.  A bunch of stuff happens, McKenna gets a newer funnier squad, and the government chases him while he chases the Predator.  Meanwhile Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) is there to do science on all of it (and by science I mean shoot guns).

The Predator only has one gear, and it is high.  This movie never really slows down, and if it does, it is usually for Brown and Munn to give us some exposition.  Speaking of Brown, if there is an MTV Movie award for chewing scenery, he is a shoe in.  I mean he is literally chewing all the time, and if he had a mustache, you had better believe he would be twirling it, even though they never give him a motivation for being evil.  I mean all the people he is hunting down would be on his side if he wasn’t trying to kill them, but hey, you can tell he is having the time of his life, and his fun is infectious.

It is obvious that Shane Black wanted to make a riff on the old 80s/90s action movies, like the ones he got his start in, and there is no greater action movie from that era than Predator, but somewhere along the line ‘a riff’ got turned in to a kind of self parody.  Whether that was on purpose or not, it is hard to say, but I am leaning towards ‘not’.  I am also guessing he got a few studio notes that he had to work in to The Predator, which is probably why it feels so overstuffed.

It may sound like I didn’t like The Predator, and to be fair, I am not sure I could call it a ‘good’ film, but I did enjoy myself.  I laughed nonstop, and the movie never slowed down enough for its flaws to really bug me while watching it.  However, if you were looking for it to return to its scary mostly serious roots, you will be disappointed.  In other words, I think in order to have fun watching The Predator you will need to adjust your expectations:  Just go in expecting to watch a glorious SyFy Original.

Mission Impossible: Fallout is the sixth movie in the franchise, and despite that fact the series shows no signs of slowing down.  There are some nukes, and Tom Cruise is going to have to run them down, literarily.  While that may sound like the plot of at least half of the Mission Impossible flicks, it still works, and the movie is impossibly fun.

The past Mission Impossible plots for the most part have been separate from the films that preceded them, with the exception of some comments about Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) relationship status, but Fallout is a direct continuation of the story started in Rogue Nation.  Ethan took out the leader of the Syndicate (Sean Harris), but the Syndicate’s agents are still causing issues, and they want to nuke the world, so the IMF will have to find out who they are and stop them.  If they choose to accept the mission that is.

Listen, people don’t go to the Mission Impossible movies for plot.  They are always convoluted, you can never trust anyone, and there will always be a ticking clock.  However, in between all that they will throw in some of the best action set pieces around.  The stories all deflate with any sort of second look.  Fallout tries to get introspective about why Hunt is doing what he is doing, but we know why.  It is so we can watch him do cool stuff while he saves the day, and all with his signature smile.

What makes this all palatable is his crew.  Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames can be relied upon to narrate the action and deliver quips, and Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust continues be a, ‘can you trust her?’, love interest that can keep up with Hunt’s antics.  She is no damsel.  Which I suppose can be said for all three, yes I said three, of the women who have fallen for Ethan in this movie.

Mission Impossible: Fallout doesn’t stray from the formula that has been working since J.J. Abrams took over the series starting with Mission Impossible III, but it doesn’t need to.  Tom Cruise doing crazy stunts while Simon Pegg makes jokes is immensely watchable.  So much so that I am sure Ethan Hunt will accept his seventh mission.