The Predator (2018) Review

Time: 107 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, sexual references & offensive language
Cast:
Boyd Holbrook as Quinn McKenna
Trevante Rhodes as Nebraska Williams
Jacob Tremblay as Rory McKenna
Olivia Munn as Casey Bracket
Sterling K. Brown as Will Traeger
Keegan-Michael Key as Coyle
Thomas Jane as Baxley
Alfie Allen as Lynch
Augusto Aguilera as Nettles
Yvonne Strahovski as Emily McKenna
Director: Shane Black

From the outer reaches of space to the small-town streets of suburbia, the hunt comes home. The universe’s most lethal hunters are stronger, smarter and deadlier than ever before, having genetically upgraded themselves with DNA from other species. When a boy (Jacob Tremblay) accidentally triggers their return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and an evolutionary biologist (Olivia Munn) can prevent the end of the human race.

The Predator, the fourth film in the franchise, was on my most anticipated films of 2018 list. With a cast that included Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Thomas Jane and more, and on top of that, original Predator cast member Shane Black (who directed The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3) being the writer and director of the movie, everything looked like it could be something great. With that said, I had some concerns in the lead up to its release. It looked way too comical, and I wasn’t really sure that would work for a Predator movie. The news about the large amount of reshoots and cuts didn’t make it any better (not to mention the controversy with a real predator originally being in the film, thankfully that was dealt with quickly). While I can understand a lot of the mixed reactions, I surprisingly found The Predator to be quite enjoyable. No, it’s not as good as the original, it’s not one of Shane Black’s best and yes it has some issues, but it also has some really good elements to it.

I should clarify that I’ve only seen the original Predator, so I can’t compare The Predator to the 2nd and 3rd movies (Predator 2 and Predators). However I didn’t feel lost so I feel like anyone who’s seen only the first movie could jump right into The Predator. Shane Black is a great writer, who wrote Lethal Weapon 1 and 2, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight as well as the films he’s directed (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3, The Nice Guys). Unfortunately his writing for The Predator is a very mixed bag. With regards to certain things like the dialogue, it feels like a B grade Shane Black was writing it and not Shane Black at the top of his game. You can definitely at times feel like it is his writing, but it’s not as strong. One thing I will say that Shane Black does do better with The Predator than the original Predator is that there is some attempt to have some emotional moments and depth with the characters. It almost always doesn’t work but I appreciate the genuine attempts. As good as the original Predator movie was, there was really nothing to these characters. On top of that, it does try some things different with the story, with a large amount of it being set in a suburbia (though we also get some sequences in the forest) and also being a much more comedic sort of movie. Now that doesn’t guarantee that the movie will be great but the best thing that each instalment can do is try different things. At the same time there are some problems with the movie. Some plot elements really don’t work well, such as Jacob Tremblay’s character who has Asperger’s and plays a big role in the movie, that plotline is a little too silly and doesn’t fit in with the movie. Shane Black has directed some very funny movies, his 3 previous movies all hit very hard whenever the comedy was present. With The Predator on the other hand, the comedy didn’t always work. It wasn’t painfully cringe worthy or anything like that, but a lot of it doesn’t work. I’m not sure if the comedic tone really works for the movie, but as I said before at least it is trying something different. There are some callbacks to the original Predator, and while I only picked up two, both of them were painful and hamfisted callbacks. To give an example of what I mean, one guy has a line “Get to the choppa” (that’s not a typo, he says choppa like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original movie). The Predator is yet another movie that has been the victim of studio interference and cuts (by Fox Studios of course). Now its nowhere like what they did with Fant4stic, but you can definitely feel that something is off about it. This is especially prevalent in the third act, which feels like a more conventional movie and seems to lack a lot of the Shane Black writing from the two acts and feels really simplified. Also the way it ends with the Predator in the end feels underwhelming. The last scene in particular is going to be very divisive especially to long time fans of the Predator lore. It is sort of sequel bait and it’s really weird and I’m not even sure what to think about it. It really has to be seen to be believed.

The cast generally do quite well. Boyd Holbrook is the lead of the movie and he does quite well in his role, however he’s a rather simple and conventional protagonist, really just a passable character. The group that Holbrook’s character teams up with, ‘The Loonies’, fair much better in comparison. They consist of Trevante Rhodes, Keegan Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen and Augusto Aguilera and they do well in their roles. Some are better than others, and you don’t necessarily care a great deal for the actual characters. but they all play off each other really well. Trevante Rhodes stands out as being particularly great. Olivia Munn works well in the movie for the most part (the scientist part to her character is a little hard to buy). Sterling K. Brown plays a 2 dimensional human villain and thankfully he plays up the role to being borderline cartoonish because the character is really generic and doesn’t have much to it. There were a lot of problems with Jacob Tremblay’s character but he plays his role well enough. Yvonne Strahovski really does play a really minor role, and really isn’t used to a fifth of her potential, her character could’ve been played by literally anyone and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Shane Black’s overall direction is pretty good. Larry Fong’s cinematography as always looks good. The action was for the most part was really good and entertaining, I like how it fully embraced its R rating and goes all out with violence. The effects for the most part worked really well, but other times it can look not so good. The CGI blood in particular looks absolutely terrible. I liked how they portrayed the Predators in this movie, being really big, intimidating and threatening. However the second Predator, much bigger than the first one, uses a lot of visual effects, and at times it can look really fake, particularly in the last act. The score by Henry Jackman is very reminiscent of the original Predator and it actually really worked for the movie.

The Predator clearly has some issues. It is a little disappointing and it doesn’t live up to the talent of the involvement of Shane Black, the cast and the name of the Predator franchise. Some of the weak humour, story points and other elements does hold back the movie from being anywhere close to being at the same level of the original. Still, there is some good stuff to be found in the movie. Some of Shane Black’s additions were good (even if it felt like B grade Shane Black most of the time), the cast worked well in their roles and it was quite entertaining generally. If you liked the original Predator, check it out knowing that it is filled with a lot of silly things and go into it expecting a somewhat entertaining movie. Again, wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be but wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be.

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Run All Night (2015) Review

Time: 114 Minutes
Age Rating: Contains violence, offensive language & drug use
Cast:
Liam Neeson as Jimmy Conlon
Joel Kinnaman as Mike Conlon
Ed Harris as Shawn Maguire
Common as Mr. Price
Vincent D’Onofrio as Detective Harding
Boyd Holbrook as Danny Maguire
Bruce McGill as Pat Mullen
Genesis Rodriguez as Gabriela Conlon
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Professional Brooklyn hitman Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) is more commonly known as THE GRAVEDIGGER. Jimmy was a mob hit-man, who was best friends with his boss Sean Maguire (Ed Harris). But when Jimmy’s son, Michael (Joel Kinnaman), is marked for death by the mob, Jimmy must go up against Sean to protect Michael at all costs. Together, he and Michael must avoid corrupt cops, contract killers and the mob to survive the night.

Run All Night was a movie that interested me because of Liam Neeson’s involvement, but having actors like Ed Harris and Jaume Collet-Serra (the director of Unknown and Non Stop both pretty good Liam Neeson movies) did help as well. Out of the three movies that the director and Neeson had worked on (that I’ve seen, I haven’t seen The Commuter yet), this film is probably my favourite. It felt more placed in the real world (in comparison to the director’s previous movies), the action was great, the cast were quite solid in their roles and it really kept my attention all the way through. It’s not a fantastic action movie but it is an entertaining movie that is worth watching if you have the time.

The mostly story takes place all night (as you can probably tell from the title) and it does well in making it really feel like it. The plot is straightforward enough, not complicated but not mindless either. It’s got some little surprises which are some good surprises. It also felt relatively grounded compared to previous collaborations between Neeson and Collet-Serra (especially Non Stop). The pacing was done well, though it really picks up after Neeson’s character kills Harris’s son’s character. The movie does get better as it moves along more. There’s not much to really say about the plot to be honest.

Liam Neeson is really good, granted he could play this role in his sleep. I like the fact that he’s not playing a very moral character like in some of his other action movie roles. He’s a drunk, he’s a criminal and that was very refreshing to see, with it not just being a rehash of Liam Neeson – Action Hero. Ed Harris proved to be a great antagonist, he like a lot of his other villains has real motives and he makes everything believable and not cartoonishly evil. Both Neeson and Harris seem like they have a history, which was important to capture as that comes into play a lot in the movie. Joel Kinnaman was also really good in his role. He shared great chemistry with Neeson, and really seemed to have an estranged relationship. I also really liked Common here, he plays an assassin that Ed Harris hires at a point in the movie. I do feel like he was underused, he was only in a few scenes of the movie but he was good when he was on screen.

I liked that Run All Night decided to go with an R rating, considering the last 2 Neeson and Jaume Collet-Serra collabs have been M/PG-13. The overall direction of Run All Night overall was quite good, the movie has a good look to it. The action scenes are great and quite violent at times, which really worked with the dark and realistic tone that the film was going for, but at the same time isn’t trying too hard to make the movie completely realistic, it still knows what type of movie it is.

Although the film isn’t a must see and isn’t one of the all time best crime thrillers in recent years, I do recommend checking it out. The action is solid, the cast are good in their roles and it does keep your attention and is entertaining from start to finish, it’s not a simple action flick with no substance but it also knows what type of movie it is. If you like a lot of the Neeson flicks, I have a strong feeling that you’ll like it as well.

Morgan (2016) Review

Time: 92 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence and offensive language
Cast:
Kate Mara as Lee Weathers
Anya Taylor-Joy as Morgan
Toby Jones as Dr. Simon Ziegler
Rose Leslie as Dr. Amy Menser
Boyd Holbrook as Skip Vronsky
Michelle Yeoh as Dr. Lui Cheng
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dr. Kathy Grieff
Paul Giamatti as Dr. Alan Shapiro
Director: Luke Scott

Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a bioengineered child who began walking and talking after one month of existence, exceeding the wildest expectations of her creators. When Morgan attacks one of her handlers, a corporate troubleshooter (Kate Mara) visits the remote, top-secret facility where she’s kept to assess the risks of keeping her alive. When the girl breaks free and starts running amok, the staff members find themselves in a dangerous lockdown with an unpredictable and violent synthetic human.

Morgan was a movie that I was curious about, mostly with the cast involved with Kate Mara, Rose Leslie, Toby Jones and many others, it looked like it had a lot of potential. However, as well know, potential doesn’t always guarantee greatness and that was certainly the case here. Morgan really wasn’t all that great, but I don’t think its as bad as some people have made it out to be. It is rather underwhelming however.

This movie didn’t really capture my interest, it moves at a slow pace. It’s also predictable for at least the very least the first two acts, anything you’d expect to happen does happen. We’ve seen so many movies about humanity creating life and that life becoming dangerous, and Morgan doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. This movie had so much opportunities to do something different. It would’ve been nice to see something unique, at least the very least for the third act. Changing up the direction of the climax or going in depth with the questions that the film raises would’ve been better. However the third act here is a typical sci-fi thriller ‘outbreak’ sequence that we’ve seen so many times before. I also found it difficult to care about what was going on, its hard to really care about any of the characters because they weren’t really that fully fleshed out or developed. There is a twist that happens, even though I wasn’t really expecting it, the overall effect was deflated because I wasn’t invested in the characters or story at all.

As I said, the cast involved is great, but most of the actors really don’t get used to their fullest potential. Kate Mara is the lead character and she does a commendable job here, the problem is that her character is just so uninteresting and poorly characterised. Her character really needed to be something more interesting and layered, its unfortunate that the lead character seems to have the least characterisation out of all the main characters. Most of the cast with Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook and others are good but aren’t utilized to their fullest potential. Paul Giamatti’s inclusion in the film was pretty much pointless, he was fine in his scenes but he was used so little it’s a wonder why they even bothered. There was really two actresses who stood out to me, one was Rose Leslie, who managed to add something to her performance that most of the cast wasn’t able to. And the other was Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character of Morgan. She manages to convey both a childlike innocence as well as dangerous instability. Those two had a believable relationship because of Taylor-Joy’s and Leslie’s chemistry.

I liked most of the direction from Luke Scott. This film generally has a good look, it is very well shot and it really makes you feel enclosed in this environment and facility. With that said, there are a couple of fight scenes and they are cut and edited so poorly, I mean this is borderline Taken 3 editing.

Morgan is a disappointment considering all the things it had going for it. The movie doesn’t really do anything that you haven’t seen before with this type of plot, its hard to care about anything that’s going on and it really doesn’t live up to any of its potential. The performances (especially from Anya Taylor-Joy and Rose Leslie) and some of the direction is good enough for me to consider this to be a somewhat okay movie. But this movie could’ve and should’ve been so much better than it actually turned out to be.

Logan (2017) Review

Time: 137 Minutes
Age Rating: Graphic violence, offensive language & cruelty
Cast
Hugh Jackman as James “Logan” Howlett/Wolverine
Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier/Professor X
Richard E. Grant as Zander Rice
Boyd Holbrook as Donald Pierce
Stephen Merchant as Caliban
Dafne Keen as Laura/X-23
Director: James Mangold

In the near future, a weary Logan (Hugh Jackman) cares for an ailing Professor X (Patrick Stewart) in a hide out on the Mexican border. But Logan’s attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are up-ended when a young mutant (Dafne Keen) arrives, being pursued by dark forces.

Logan was one of my most anticipated films of 2017. At the same time though, I was incredibly nervous. This film was going to send off Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart as Wolverine and Professor X respectively. This film needed to be perfect, or at least perfect in the way that it ended their stories. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the best comic book movies I’ve seen. I know that I say this with many comic book movies, but this is like top 5 level. Logan truly blew me away.

Make no mistake, although Logan is set in the X-Men universe, tonally it doesn’t feel like the previous X-Men films, or really any other superhero movie you’ve ever seen. It’s quite bleak, dark and much more smaller and personal, it’s not an end of the world type of story. It actually does have many themes of a Western. Now this movie is R rated, and it’s not just for the violence (which I’ll get into later), it’s also so that it can allow the filmmakers to tell a darker story, and I’m glad they did that. Don’t also go into this movie expecting a comic accurate movie. I won’t spoil anything but there are some differences from the comics, I was completely fine with it but I just know that some people won’t be. Comic accuracy is not the most important thing everything however. I can’t really find a fault in the story. I guess the second act is slower (at least compared to the first and third act) but I still liked it, and it allowed for some more character developing moments. As for whether Logan and Professor X and sent off well, I’ll just say yes, they pulled it off. The ending of the movie was perfect.

Both Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart give magnificent final performances as their iconic characters. Both characters have clearly been through a lot and aren’t as optimistic as they were in previous movies. Their arcs were done incredibly well, especially Logan’s, it was the perfect arc to end his story. There’s a great new addition to the X-Men series with X-23/Laura, played by Dafne Keen. She’s definitely a showstealer, just in the way she acts, looks at people (she doesn’t even need to say any lines and we can tell what she’s thinking), and of course the action scenes. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of her in future movies. This is a character driven movie, and these three characters are done so incredibly well. Boyd Holbrook plays one of the Reavers hunting Laura down. He is really effective and quite entertaining but as the film progresses he sort of gets pushed more into the background. Other supporting actors like Stephen Merchant and Richard E. Grant are also good in their roles.

The action is brutal and unrelenting and it is excellent. While the violence is bloody, it never felt excessive, it felt appropriate for the story that was being told. Unlike most comic book movies, Logan tries to make it’s action as realistic and smaller as possible and it pays off, don’t expect big explosions or planes falling from the sky. In terms of the stand out action sequence, I’ll just say that it’s in the third act. The cinematography I also should mention was also beautiful.

Logan is truly a magnificent movie. Along with the brutal action and the great performances, the story works so perfectly. I haven’t seen a comic book movie like this, one that is willing to risk everything and deciding to create this story. I’m being vague because I want you to experience this movie for yourself without knowing too much about it. So yes, definitely check it out. Even though I’m praising this highly (like everyone else), I must emplore you to lower your expectations (high expectations usually result in disappointment). I will say though that no matter what you think of the overall movie, there would be no denying that Wolverine was given a perfect sendoff.