In the Flesh: Predator: Killer of Killers

Sparse dialogue, a gorgeous hand-painted visual style, and a good, solid understanding of genre storytelling go a long way in the right hands. Predator: Killer of Killers may not break any new ground for sci-fi action, but its first two shorts demonstrate the restraint and attention to detail which made director Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey such an unexpected delight. Stoic samurai brothers who find themselves at odds with each other and with a slippery, snakelike Predator, a vengeful Norse shieldmaiden seeking the man who forced her to take her own father’s life at swordpoint, it’s the kind of historically grounded pulp you can riff on pretty much indefinitely. The stuttery, cel-shaded animation has a lovingly labor-intensive feel to it, and each segment has a distinct and carefully chosen color palette to set it apart. It’s broad material, but prepared with real focus and evident affection. Each segment’s Predator is a little work of art from a design standpoint, functioning as a thematic and personal foil to the story’s hero without feeling clumsily-sketched. 

Things come apart somewhat in the film’s third short, a World War II-era dogfight with irregular pacing and a heavy-handed character arc. Rick Gonzalez’s voice performance as pilot Johnny Torres is perfectly serviceable, but undercut by a plodding script which almost compulsively lets the slack out of what should be nail-biting suspense every time it starts to get going in earnest. It’s a pity to waste Michael Biehn of Terminator fame on a legless piece of stunt-casting like his role here as a tough old flight chief. To an extent Torres’ presence hampers the already rushed and overly ambitious final sequence as well. His steady delivery of shopworn quips does little to bring the film’s central trio together in the way Trachtenberg is clearly aiming for, and the entire emotional resolution between the three of them feels forced and unearned when it finally arrives. There’s fun to be had, sure, but it’s both thinner and lumpier than the hearty stuff served up in the first two installments.

Where the set design in the first three shorts feels closely observed and relatively granular, the Predator homeland is a mishmash of interesting ideas and bland, incompletely realized military/barbarian sci-fi imagery. It doesn’t feel like a culture, constrained as it is by the bland design work of the film series. The Warlord (Britton Watkins) is a decent final adversary, and like all the film’s Predators he represents a major aesthetic step up from the mainline film series, much more in line with the sleeker, more intimidating brute from Trachtenberg’s first film. They have real individual personality and style in a way it’s hard to get across through a motorized latex mask rig. Trachtenberg likewise makes good use of the medium to dive into imaginative and interesting action sequences, from a struggle deep in a frozen lake to the airborne balletics of the dogfight scene. Predator: Killer of Killers has serious problems baked into its structure and tone, but there’s plenty to like here even so.