Predator (1987)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Kevin Peter Hall

Have I Seen it Before: Heck, you’re talking to the guy who started a Facebook group in support of the idea of Carl Weathers becoming Governor of Oklahoma because, apparently, the cast of this movie is where we need to get Governors.

Did I Like It: There’s a problem that happens when a long-running film series has a complete revelation with a later entry. I’m looking in your direction, Prey (2022). The original film can start to feel a bit stripped down, a bit tame. I have a real hard time really getting into A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) when I know that Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) exists.

Can this film possibly hold up?

Yeah, pretty much. It accomplishes what the series lost to certain degree as time went on (and especially when they were set up on a series of blind dates with xenomorphs for a couple of movies. The Predator films are at there best opportunities for seamless genre mashup, and accomplishing this by simply giving us a well-made example of one genre*, and then injecting the Predator into the mix. Prey did it by giving us a well-crafted epic in the pre-colonial world of indigenous America… and then threw a dreadlocked alien into the mix. Here, this film would work perfectly well as the group of paramilitary soldiers enter the jungle with a mix of motivations and understanding about their mission, only to reach disaster. Come to think of it, what the hell was Schwarzenegger’s name in Commando (1985)? Is this a sequel to that? I’m sure someone would have noted that before I did, but it sure as hell could have been**.

*Probably doesn’t work for every genre, though. And, just as soon as I type that a Kindergarten Cop (1990) riff where one of the students is a Yautja would be watchable as hell.

**I keep lamenting that Rambo: Last Blood (2019) didn’t follow the rumored plot line of Stallone squaring off agains a malevolent alien. I had apparently forgotten that this film is essentially that, and way better than we could have expected if Stallone had gotten control of the works.

Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Bruce Willis, Jeremy Irons, Samuel L. Jackson, Graham Greene

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I wonder sometimes what was the last movie I saw before starting these reviews in 2018. There’s a better than even chance that it was this during my last march through the sequels to Die Hard (1988).

Did I Like It: In my head, I’ve always viewed this as not just the best sequel in the series, but the only one even remotely worth a damn. I wondered, though, after my recent re-watch of Die Hard 2 (1990) if I would start thinking differently. Ultimately, though, I still think this is the strongest aside from the original, even if I finally found the charms in Die Harder.

It might be a fairly run of the mill 90s actioner. Indeed, it started out life as a completely unrelated original film intended as a vehicle for Brandon Lee. Abandoned after he died during the filming of The Crow (1994), it was then dusted off as a potential sequel for Lethal Weapon (1987) before eventually becoming what we have now.

One presumes that Simon (Irons) was not Hans Gruber’s brother the entire time, but that would certainly have been a choice. Come to think of it, the film seems so quintessentially New York-based (I don’t dare say that the city is like another character, so relax) it feels like it would have lost something had it followed Riggs and Murtaugh in LA, although I have no trouble imagining that the opening sequence with the sandwich board was written for Mel Gibson first.

It allows John McClane (Willis) to no longer be a fish out of water. Shedding the trappings of the first movie, it feels like this series can go pretty much anywhere.

Let’s just ignore where the series did go, shall we?

Last Action Hero (1993)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin O’Brien, F. Murray Abraham, Art Carney

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Naturally, given some of the work I’ve done in the semi-recent past, I kind of avoided the film. Sort of like people did in the summer of 93. Ha! That wasn’t fair; I think I was there opening weekend.

Did I Like It: It’s a nice idea—God knows I’d be a little disingenuous claiming anything else—and there are moments of the film that are delightful. You’ve probably seen all of them occasionally crop up on youtube. Schwarzenegger hating himself. The cartoon cat* (Danny DeVito**) popping up every once in a while. Stallone actually being in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

But none of it quite comes together to be a good movie on its own terms. Some of the jokes are less clever than groan inducing (Leo the Fart, anyone?) to anyone over the age of eight (I was nearly nine when it came out). Austin O’Brien’s character is prime 90s era movie kid, complete with randomly vacillating between preternaturally wise, and absolutely infantile. This feels like a role written for Macaulay Culkin but which either couldn’t meet his quote or came at the time when Culkin couldn’t possibly be interested in being in a movie again.

The ultimate problem, though, is that for a movie attempting to be a blend of action and comedy, it’s not nearly funny enough to be a good (to say nothing of great) comedy, and it is a pointedly inept action film with a sluggish pace, flimsy stunts, and damp editing. McTiernan—I offer The Hunt for Red October (1990) and, or course Die Hard (1988) as evidence—should have at least been able to deliver an action film which at least doesn’t consistently mistake satire as an act of self-shaming.

*One can’t help but wonder what kind of series of movies Jack Slater actually was… All I know is it’s got to be pretty weird.

**Just one example that having Schwarzenegger serving as executive producer will get a lot of different people out of bed)

The Hunt for Red October (1990)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones

Have I Seen it Before: Yup.

Did I Like It: So, lately I’ve been listening to many of the later (read: preposterously impossible to be adapted to film) Tom Clancy novels via audio book and before we get into this film, I think now is as good a time as any to get some things off my chest. Never have I ever been through such a more progressively ridiculous set of events in my life, and I include both the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Trump presidency in that statement. Why have I subjected myself to these interminable tomes? Well, I had purchased Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears (read, those Clancy books which were begrudgingly—by all parties—adapted to film) on Audible and with my reading goal for 2021 well passed, I could take some chances on some books I only bought on an ill-defined impulse. By the time I was in the middle of Fears—which at least partially hinges on a subplot involving Ryan’s bout of erectile dysfunction*--I was “Jim-ing” an unseen camera so often, that John Krasinski’s eventual casting finally made sense. I kept going because the knowledge that Ryan’s supreme intelligence and only-honest-man-in-town-ness propels him into the Presidency… for reasons. It’s time I’ll never get back, and by the time of Executive Orders when Ryan addresses the nation and applauds his fellow citizens for making responsible decisions for themselves in the efforts to stem an outbreak of airborne Ebola, I laughed so hard at my car’s stereo, I fear I may have hurt my Honda Civic’s feelings.

Tom Clancy is garbage. He continues to be garbage, and he’s been dead for nearly ten years.

But, here’s the good news! None of the later—and even occasionally posthumous—absurdities of the saga of John Patrick Ryan are here. This is a brilliantly constructed spy thriller, where Jack Ryan (Baldwin – could you imagine him, or for that matter Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, or Krasinski portraying Clancy’s latter-day Reaganesque fever dream of a President?) is the perpetually under-estimated smartest man in the room… or boat.

While I might say that the story ultimately halts more than it concludes, the trip to that anti-climax is engaging enough, and all of the people involved aren’t bringing to the proceedings the same baggage as the source material** that it’s extraordinarily difficult not to like the film, despite my steadily increasing antipathy for the character.

*Clancy sure knew his audience. I’ve got to give him that.

**To be fair, part of the film’s strength is that the direct source material is far and away Clancy’s strongest book. It came before he started to buy his own press.

Die Hard (1988)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, Bonnie Bedelia

Have I Seen it Before: Every Christmas Eve for years…

Anybody got a problem with that?

No? We good?

Did I Like It: It’s reputation as a one of the greatest action films of all time would be hard to dispute. Every moment of the film is precisely to design. I can count on one hand the amount of films that waste not one second of their screen time. The movie made Bruce Willis a star beyond the dreams of Moonlighting, when his subsequent work in films has only intermittently earned that degree of notoriety. It birthed an entire of subgenre of “Die Hard on a…” action movies that actually contributed a few pretty great movies.

Someone might not care for action films, and on this level one could not recommend the film. Otherwise, it is one of those superlative films that repels controversial or contrary assessments.

Except on that one issue. Fine, let’s talk about it. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Many—including the film’s star, apparently—have dismissed the idea completely out of hand. Many insist that it objectively not only qualifies as a Christmas movie, but in fact is at or near the top of the greatest Christmas movies. Still more find the debate between the two points to be tiresome and tedious.

I think all three perspectives need to take a minute and remember both the holiday they’re dragging through the mud and the movie they’re taking the piss out of in the process. It’s about family. It’s about togetherness. It’s about trying to be with family on certain dates in late December. If that’s not a Christmas movie, then I think the universe is fundamentally at odds about fundamental truths.

I watch Die Hard every Christmas Eve. The holiday is not real, nor does it even officially start until Argyle (De’voreaux White) drives Mr. and Mrs. McLane away in his limo.

If it’s not a part of your Christmas celebration, then it is not a Christmas movie for you. Can the rest of us do what we want in December?

Good.

Now if I only could get everyone on board with the idea that Batman Returns (1992) being a Christmas movie, then we could finally have peace on Earth and good will toward man and Bonnie Bedelia.