The Predator Review: 5 Ups & 6 Downs

4. The Violence

If you're looking for a bloodbath, you've got it. Shane Black has clearly decided that the way to make up for the lack of nuance and subtlety is just to rip people in half every few minutes. There are whole armies of side characters who exist solely to be victims of the Predators, almost like they're on a conveyor belt and Black is determined to out-gross the Saw franchise for the way they're dispatched.

This is absolutely not a comment on the futility of war and the human condition or an allegory for the pillage of foreign lands by American military presence: it's just a film that really likes pulling various bones out of people while they're still alive. And there's definitely an audience for that kind of thing.

Sure, the attempt to get in as many gags as possible jars slightly when people's actual entrails are on show, but that does fit the self-conscious B-movie vibe that hums along under the expensive effects.