Predator 2

Directed by Stephen Hopkins, Predator 2 follows grizzled cop Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) as he’s forced to battle the title creature after it begins hunting police and civilians alike within a sweltering, crime-ridden Los Angeles. Filmmaker Hopkins, working from Jim and John Thomas’ screenplay, delivers a sporadically watchable yet mostly underwhelming sequel that suffers from a pervasively sluggish, momentum-free atmosphere, as the movie’s been suffused with a whole host of less-than-captivating elements that cumulatively prevent the viewer from working up much interest in or sympathy for the mostly unlikable protagonists’ exploits – with the arms-length vibe compounded by a grimy, unappealing visual sensibility and smattering of egregiously padded-out sequences. (The latter is especially true of the drawn-out and somewhat anticlimactic final stretch.) And although the picture boasts a handful of admittedly engaging interludes (eg the predator attacks a busy subway train), Predator 2 generally squanders its positive attributes, including relatively strong work by Glover and his costars, to cement its place as a bloated, ineffective followup to a far-from-flawless original.

** out of ****

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