1987 science fiction action horror, dir. John McTiernan, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers:
IMDb /
allmovie. There's something
out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man.
It's hard sometimes to remember that this came out after
Aliens; it feels much more primitive. But it's similarly calling
back to Vietnam films, and it has a similar sense of having a bunch of
tough guys who are nonetheless doomed.
But the way it shows that is, in effect, to have a miniature action
film as its first act, the standard story of the badasses who go into
enemy territory and wipe out a bad guy encampment in spite of bad
intelligence. This is the kind of thing Arnie did in Commando, but
it's sketched in: we know this story, we know these characters such as
they are, we don't need it laid out in detail, and the sub-story is
over almost before it's started. Then we're stuck in the jungle with
something out there…
(What was the extraction plan, by the way? You were expecting to hit
the camp and then bail out, with rescued hostages who might be injured
and a bunch more bad guys looking for you. Where did the multi-mile
trek though jungle to a landing zone figure into this?)
Of course, then it becomes the Most Dangerous Game remake that it
was always meant to be. Yeah, these guys are big tough mean soldiers,
they're badasses who can destroy an insurgent camp and not get
injured, but against this hunter they're just mildly challenging
prey. It's heavy-handed, but it works. (I'm particularly impressed by
the creature's self-surgery, economically making it quite clear that
this is an intelligent entity, not just a random killer robot.)
If anything fails it's at the end, when it's just Arnie and the
creature going hand to hand (because, like Bennett in Commando, the
creature has fallen in love with Arnie and can't turn down the
opportunity for a fair fight). At that point, it's basically the same
Arnie in a fight that we've seen before, though admittedly it's a
well-done fight; the story element that's more interesting to me is
the one where the enemy is stronger and tougher and you have to
out-think it.
Scorpions are poikilothermic, by the way.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.