Predator

The useful thing about casting Arnold Schwarzenegger against an alien hunter is that we begin with a fairly firm idea of who ought to be dangerous. John McTiernan uses that expectation to make Predator a tense, carefully staged action film. It starts with a commando mission in the jungle and lets an unseen opponent disturb the soldiers’ confidence. There is pleasure in watching capable people confront a problem their normal methods cannot solve, and McTiernan knows how long to keep us looking for it.

Schwarzenegger’s Dutch is persuasive because the part needs physical authority before it needs eloquence. He looks capable of leading these men, which gives their predicament more weight than a collection of anonymous victims could manage. Carl Weathers, Bill Duke and Jesse Ventura help give the platoon the feeling of a group accustomed to one another, even when the script supplies dialogue that confuses aggression with wit. Their camaraderie gives us enough reason to care where the men are, without requiring much knowledge of their lives.

Donald McAlpine’s cinematography makes the jungle difficult to read without making the action impossible to follow. The vegetation gives the eye too many places to check, so we keep examining the surroundings even when nothing appears to be happening. John Vallone’s production design keeps the military surroundings functional and recognisable, giving the alien technology a familiar world to intrude upon. Together, they make the setting convincing enough that we accept the difficulty of moving through it and finding anything within it.

Editors Mark Helfrich and John F. Link give the action a pace that feels forceful without making every passage equally frantic. They leave room for waiting, which matters when the chief attraction is something we cannot see clearly. Alan Silvestri’s percussive score supplies a military insistence that suits the soldiers and keeps the quieter stretches from feeling comfortable. It can press hard, but the music earns its place by making the pauses feel like temporary interruptions to the pursuit.

We were unnerved by the cloaking effect: knowing that the hunter is somewhere in the greenery does not make it easy to find. The thermal-vision images work for the opposite reason, picking the men out when the jungle has been concealing so much. Their bodies become conspicuous in a view they do not share. These effects are simple to understand, and McTiernan uses them to make the soldiers’ disadvantage visible without stopping for an explanation of the equipment.

The screenplay is less resourceful about the people. John Thomas and Jim Thomas rely on familiar macho types, and some of the banter is tiresome enough to make silence welcome. Nor does every return to thermal vision add anything we have not already understood about the hunt. The critical consensus is cooler than we are, finding too little story beneath the effects; we think it gives too little credit to the suspense those effects help create. The thin characterisation matters, but it rarely stops us worrying about the immediate danger.

Creature thrillers are more frightening when the people in danger seem capable of putting up a fight, and Predator makes good use of that. Its 107 minutes are well spent for anyone who enjoys patient stalking as much as forceful action. Just do not expect the men to be as interesting when they open their mouths.