If It Bleeds…
Predator is a film about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, Dutch, leading an elite special forces group on what is supposedly a fairly routine jungle rescue mission. As they begin to discover, the situation is much more involved than that. An alien creature, the Predator, stalks Dutch’s crew until finally the hunted become the hunters. Most of you are probably very familiar with the intensity and violence in the film, as well as the powerful suspense that builds up as the humans are ruthlessly hunted and destroyed.
Predator does a great job of combining full charged action, similar to Commando, while simultaneously providing a very suspenseful and unique sci-fi angle. Big action stars of the time, including Arnold, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, and even Jesse The Body Ventura turn in fine performances. The combination is a film that is a lot of fun and has a very high replay value, just like a lot of the 80s and 90s action flicks.
An Unsatisfying Release
On Blu-ray, Predator looks alright, about as good as I expected. Fox probably could have done more with it, but as it is, the video quality isn’t terrible. There is a constant grainy look, which is far worse in some scenes than others. Despite being a bit newer, I thought that this release didn’t look as good as Commando, for what it’s worth. I did like the detailed textures of the vegetation and skin, but most of the dark scenes look quite grainy.
There are no extras of any use; just some trailers for other Fox releases and D-Box Motion Control support (does anyone have one of these?). Given all of the extra features that have already been released for Predator over the years on DVD, it’s quite disappointing — although honestly, not very surprising — that Fox didn’t include any extras here.
