Gilmour93

Predator set in a time when its adversaries couldn’t sharpen pencils because the CIA hadn’t been founded yet. The pros are its straightforwardness and its ability to stand alone without adhering to the rules of McTiernan's 35-year-old universe (I didn’t even catch a single note from Silvestri). On the downside, it doesn’t quite play with the atmosphere of unknown danger, the blatantly digital fauna is disappointing, and there’s a lack of attention to details that would provide the patina of place and time, à la The Revenant (from language to well-maintained nails). As for how the great-great-great-grandmother of tracker Billy made a naive fool out of the dreadlocked hunter, I’ll leave that without comment. By the way, with the current heroine trend, when will we see oppressed antagonists get their moment? How about a female Predator who triumphantly fights in the Ardennes in 1944 against a racist SS unit and a chauvinistic American Marine commando? P.S. If you wait until the end of the animations during the final credits, you’ll see a hint of how Danny Glover’s gift ended up in the hands of its giver. Let’s hope they behaved better than the white colonizers.

It's hard to say whether Wilson is an overly honest neurotic, a sociopath, or just an idiot, but after a few seconds of his screwball antics, you feel like spiking his face as if it were a volleyball. Naturally, it becomes clear that he has a good heart and just expresses it in his own quirky way, but that's just another checkbox on a list you could write at the start, anticipating what's to come. Harrelson, adopting a Steven Soderbergh likeness, can put in all the effort he wants, but aside from the spirit of Ghost World, this lacks coherence, entertainment, and a smoother transition into the depressive phase.

Finding something positive here is about as difficult as spotting a louse with the naked eye in General Drago's fancy fur coat! Maybe the fact that something is always happening, but you'll need to overlook how it’s happening. Lundgren resembles a drunken polar bear with facial paralysis, carrying grenades in his pockets like they're glucose tablets. The sped-up car chases only lack a fleeing squad of Keystone Cops with batons, the gunfights between characters who don't bother to take cover reach almost Western-like proportions (that double shootout in the football stadium was particularly rich), there’s a brief appearance of a noteworthy Volga pick-up (!), and it all culminates with the villainous agent Michael Paré, who can’t hold it together and literally bursts into laughter. My first Direct Contact with Danny Lerner has to be the last, because I simply can’t handle this. Not even if he came up with something ridiculous, like a shark in Venice.