predator review 1987
Monday, August 31, 2009
Released on June 12, 1987, Predator was #1 at the box office in its opening weekend. Its opening weekend gross of $12 million was second to Beverly Hills Cop II in 1987.[8] The film grossed nearly $60 million in the U.S. and $100 million at the worldwide box office.[9]
Initial critical reaction to the film was generally negative with critics focusing on the lack of story and excitement. Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times described it as "grisly and dull, with few surprises"[10] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the film is "a rather pointless thing when you get down to it, has little of the provocative intelligence that was found in "Terminator." But at least it's self-propelling in terms of suspense and cheap thrills."[11] Dean Lamanna wrote in Cinefantastique that "the militarized monster movie tires under its own derivative weight."[12] Variety wrote that the film was a "slightly above-average actioner that tries to compensate for tissue-thin-plot with ever-more-grisly death sequences and impressive special effects."[13] Michael Wilmington wrote a negative review focusing on the story, proclaiming it as "arguably one of the emptiest, feeblest, most derivative scripts ever made as a major studio movie."[14]
Among the positive reviews, Roger Ebert praised the film stating that, "it has good location photography and terrific special effects, and it supplies what it claims to supply: an effective action movie" but still noted that "the action moves so quickly that we overlook questions such as why would an alien species go to all the effort to send a creature to earth, just so that it could swing from the trees and skin American soldiers? Or, why would a creature so technologically advanced need to bother with hand-to-hand combat, when it could just zap Arnold with a ray gun".[15]
However, reaction to the film has warmed with time. In 2007, Entertainment Weekly named it the #22 greatest action movie of all time.[16] The magazine also ranked the film 14th on their "The Best Rock-'em, Sock-'em Movies of the Past 25 Years" list.[17] As of June of 2009, the film holds a 76% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. [18]
