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Compared to the glory days of the Seventies, when African
American action stars like Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Richard Roundtree, and Pam
Grier ruled the drive-ins, black representation in action movies in the
following decades has been depressingly meager.
Things were particularly bleak during the Reagan years, where African
Americans playing the lead in studio action films were pretty much limited to
Eddie Murphy in the BEVERLY HILLS COP movies and Carl Weathers in ACTION JACKSON. Great stuff, but not nearly enough. So it was a pleasant surprise that in 1990
(technically still the ‘80’s if you ask calendar nerds), the sequel to one of
the decade’s largest sci-fi action movies starred (and was absolutely dominated) by
Danny Glover. I am speaking of the one
and only PREDATOR 2.
The Capsule:
In the near future of 1997, Los Angeles has issues. Two vicious drug gangs are shooting the city
to pieces, and the outmanned and outgunned cops are stuck in the middle. On top of all that a mysterious third party
is kicking ass and taking spines, leaving skinned bodies hanging all over the
town. When one of his team gets butchered by this new hunter, hotheaded Lt. Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) makes it his
mission to put the bastard down. He’s
not the only one looking for the elusive killer.
The Feds, led by Agent Keyes (Gary Busey), have their own special
interest in the target, which happens to be a seven foot tall invisible walking
scorpion with a laser cannon. Harrigan
will need to push himself to the limit if he wants to keep this predator from
turning his skull into a trophy.
PREDATOR 2 is the perfect franchise sequel. It takes the basic idea of the original,
super tough alien big game hunter poaching gun toting humans, but
completely shakes up all the other details.
The isolated jungle setting is replaced by a near future crime ridden
cityscape. There is still an ensemble
cast of protagonists, only with about a third of the combined muscle
weight. Instead of a super elite team of
mercenaries who can take down an entire guerilla compound, PREDATOR 2 gives us
a batch of brave but thoroughly ordinary cops.
The point of the first film was to show that even a team of the best
warriors on Earth were completely outclassed by just one of these “ugly
motherfuckers”. The implication here is
that these cops, led by the incomparable but somewhat less athletic Danny
Glover, are going to be mincemeat. 
Honestly, the cops have a hard enough time surviving even before
the alien shows up. They are regularly caught in the crossfire as the ruling street gangs try to massacre each other. The projected L.A. of 1997 is the kind of
ultraviolent warzone that the conservative law and order types always think
civilization is on the brink of dissolving into. I’m willing to bet that whenever Trump talks
about “inner cities”, he is picturing scenes from this movie. It’s surprising he hasn’t name checked the
Jamaican Voodoo Posse in his tweets about “bad dudes” yet.
Allow me a slight aside on the subject of street gang wardrobe. PREDATOR 2 may be set in 1997, but it is clearly
a product of the Eighties. And the Eighties
loved its completely ridiculous looking street gangs. For some reason it was decided that all gangs
during this period were to be modeled after a mix of THE WARRIORS and WEST SIDE
STORY. The punks in the subway scene
look like they could start breakdancing at any moment. El Scorpio’s Columbian gang is the most
practical, mostly headbands and bulletproof vests. Other than Scorpio’s cocaine covered goatee, they aren’t that exciting. King Willie’s Jamaican Voodoo Posse, on the
other hand, is glorious. Everyone
dresses like a combination of Rick James and the Mad Hatter. One of the lieutenants is decked out in fringed
gold riding chaps with matching gold six shooters. King Willie himself wears a giant Africa
shaped chest plate like he’s a Rasta conquistador. Those cats understood style. 
The Predator is even deadlier than in the first movie. As with all good sequels, this one gives us a
greater variety of goodies. This
Predator is definitely the high tech gadget loving kind of hunter. In addition to the standard cloaking field,
shoulder cannon, and arm blades load out, it also packs a net gun, razor prong
shooter, retractable spear, and best of all, a laser Frisbee. It racks up way more of a body count. Cops, criminals, civilians, silver suited
Feds, anyone with a weapon is fair game.
It’s also a bit more of a dick than the first one. It taunts Harrigan at the grave of his friend
Danny (Rubén Blades) by leaving him the necklace it tore off his corpse. It has zero respect for public property, and
it seems a little too eager to use its atomic wrist bomb in the middle of the
city. The attack in the subway was
just it showing off for a crowd (and giving a noble death to the otherwise
completely irritating Bill Paxton, playing a smarmier version of Hudson from
ALIENS). On the other hand, it does leave
the kids alone, and didn’t kill Leona (Maria Conchita Alonso) when it sees that she
is pregnant. I guess it wanted them to
grow up to have full sized trophy skulls. 
So our heroes are clearly outmatched in almost every
regard. It’s the disparity that makes
this movie work so well. Danny Glover is
as far as you can get from Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he makes Harrigan even
more of a badass. Dutch is a battle
hardened warrior in prime physical condition.
He knows tactics, he can make booby traps, he can lift a truck. And he still got his ass kicked by a
Predator. Luck and quick thinking was
the only thing that saved him. Compared
to him, Harrigan, a middle aged cop who gets winded running up stairs, seems
like he would be lucky to last five seconds against one of these things. He doesn’t have the muscle or the elite
training. What he does have above
everything else is motherfucking determination.
This guy will not quit. He will
not let his superiors, the Feds, or seven foot tall invisible monsters get in
his way. Attitude is his greatest
weapon.
Another nice twist is that it is Harrigan who spends most of
the movie hunting the Predator. The
first half is basically a police procedural.
He runs down clues, consults the Medical Examiner, and has his people
running tails. We don’t get to see the
asshole police chief (Robert Davi, the go to man for asshole superiors) ask
Harrigan for his badge, but it comes close.
He even has a secret meeting with King Willie (Calvin Lockhart), the superstitious crime boss,
for advice. The entire third act is a
cross-town, cross-building chase.
Harrigan will stop at nothing to catch his man. Or scorpion faced alien thing.
All this leads to perhaps the most badass scene in all of
cinema. Harrigan follows the Predator
down into his ship for the final confrontation.
The fight itself is amazing, sort of a high tech knife fight in a misty,
weirdly lit crypt. Again, the odds are
wildly out of whack. Kevin Peter Hall in
his Predator gear dwarfed Schwarzenegger when they faced off. Here, he looks like he
could just step on Glover. Harrigan
gets smacked around like a rag doll. The
Predator’s arrogance gets the better of him, and despite having lost an arm to
him earlier, it can’t help but underestimate the bloody and exhausted cop. That’s when Harrigan [spoiler] shoves a laser
Frisbee right through its chest. 
Awesome as that was, it isn’t the badass part. Once Harrigan has confirmed his kill, the
familiar triangular laser sights start moving over him. A dozen more Predators appear from out of the
mist. They surround him. Harrigan drops the laser Frisbee, shrugs, and
asks “Who’s next?”
Daaaamn. He just
stood down a room full of the galaxy’s most fearsome killers with nothing but
attitude. The only thing the
punked Predators can do is look at their feet and let him leave. The leader even throws him a trophy, an
ancient flintlock pistol. It had a
personal engraving from the previous owner, but everyone knows what it should
read: “Earth’s #1 Badass”.
It’s also worth noting that if not for Harrigan, this would
have been a straight up vigilante movie.
The Predator isn’t hunting cops, it’s hunting the criminals. They are the most dangerous game in this
scenario. The Predator only starts to go
after the cops because Harrigan keeps pushing it. If he had listened to orders and stayed out
of it, the Predator would have taken out all the gangs, collected its trophies,
and taken off. It kind of would have
been the hero, The Punisher with Pincers. I’m sure that’s how the
other Predators framed it to this guy’s Predator wife and kids back on Predator
Planet.
Director Stephen Hopkins is no John McTiernan, and while
PREDATOR 2 lacks much of the emotion and beauty of the original, it more than
makes up for it in guts and pure entertainment.
It’s a great example of how unconventional casting can elevate a
film. Although the monster is the title
character, Danny Glover owns this movie.
The Eighties may have been an embarrassingly sparse decade for African
American leading roles in action, but at least it ended strong.
C Chaka
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