"The Predator," the latest iteration of the Predator movies, is a confusing mess of offensive quips, flagrant sexism and over-the-top violence. Director Shane Black, who was the first person killed in the original 1987 Predator, has made a movie that causes us to wonder why sequels like this ever get made. The movie starts with a strike team (led by Boyd Holbrook's sniper Quinn McKenna) getting ready to storm the jungle compound of a Mexican drug cartel. But before they can execute their mission, a spaceship rips through a breach int he sky and crash lands nearby. In the wreckage, McKenna finds the helmet and arm gauntlet of one of the predators. The sole survivor of his mission, McKenna escapes and mails the alien gear home to the States, where his son (Jacob Tremblay) discovers its sic-fi powers. Meanwhile, a team of government baddies (lead by Sterling K. Brown, one of the films few highlights) not only want the extraterrestrial goodies, but also want to know what McKenna knows. And so begins a race to both battle and understand these alien hunters and why they've decided to visit earth now. Olivia Munn, as a brainiac biologist, is on had to provide a lot of cornball exposition. She does, however, also get to join the macho action and there's no explaining why a scientist would be able to handle some of the weapons she gets to use.
Holbrook is fine enough as the film's central hero. It's not his fault that Black veers between action and cheesy comedy and it doesn't take long for "The Predator" to spiral into campy, comic nonsense and aimless carnage. The biggest waste of talent is casting young Jacob Tremblay as Quinn's son Rory. Unfortunately, he's asked to play an autistic boy with so much stereotypical baggage that it just adds another negative for the movie. "The Predator" isn't exactly a dumb movie, but it's not a smart one either. Even worse, it's open-ended enough to suggest a sequel. Guess that will be dependent on box office receipts.
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