The he-man one-liners fly and the Vietnam parallels are unavoidable.
Pitched somewhere between a sci-fi invasion film and a red-meat Reagan-era action hoedown, John McTiernan’s insanely satisfying Predator is a delirious slab of Schwarzeneggerian beefcake. Along with a team of macho mercenaries, Ahnuld’s perfectly named Dutch matches wits and pumped-up muscles with an invisible heat-seeking alien hunter in the jungles of Central America. The he-man one-liners fly and the Vietnam parallels are unavoidable. Except, to quote another ‘80s action hero, John Rambo, this time we get to win. As for the sequels and spin-offs: Predator 2 is better than you’ve heard, but the rest are better avoided.