Los Angles 1997. Gang warfare rages between rival drug gangs with the police caught in the middle. During one shoot out the police led by Mike Harrington (Glover) trap 6 men in a building. Before they can act the 6 are violently killed and stung up by an unseen attacker. As more armed gangs are attacked and killed in similarly unexplained ways the police realise that a new element is attempting to muscle in on the existing gangs. Glover and his team begin to hunt the new gang until they are joined by a FBI unit who seem to know more about the gang than they let on.
This follows on from the first movie well - not a forced sequel picking up from the last, but a different film that ties it's action in with previous events. None of the original stars return but the cast is full of name stars - Gary Busey, Danny Glover, Bill Paxton, Ruben Blades, Robert Davi. The plot is basically the same as the first - an unseen attacker attacks armed forces in the jungle - except here it's in the urban jungle, and it's actually pretty good.
The plot has the core of the predator doing battle, but now has another string of the FBI/Gary Busey conspiracy which makes the film much more interesting. However all this is window dressing to the action scenes. Unfortunately this doesn't have as much slow tension as the first film, but rather has long raging gun battle throughout - this does tend to bring it down to the level of a standard action movie but it does have some standout scenes that lift the film. The strobing fight on the subway is the most effective but the battles between police, gangs and predator are also very well handled. Overall the action is great but could have benefited from more slow, tension building. That said this sequel doesn't make the mistake that other "creature-feature" sequels have made - this keep the Predator hidden even though we already know what it looks like. For the most part the Predator moves cloaked and we only really seek the consequences of it's actions rather than the whole beast revealed. This keeps a certain mystery and helps build a certain amount of tension.
The final battle between hero and Predator is not quite as good as Schwarzenegger's confrontation with the alien, but is still a good finish to the film. It's easy to believe that Arnie could use the jungle and stealth to defeat the alien - but Danny Glover (Mr "3 days from retirement"?) taking on the Predator in what is essentially an extended fist fight? Sorry - it's fun to watch but a little hard to believe.
The performances are good, Glover gets to be a Riggs type rather than a Murtagh/retirement case. Paxton plays the energetic side kick and continues his killer-alien experience that he started in Aliens. Even Busey, now almost completely bereft of his star status and wallowing in video thrillers, is good here as a shadowy FBI agent. Sad to think that he got so good at this role that he got regularly typecast and is now doing things like Lethal Tender, Universal Soldier 2 and many others I've tried hard to forget. The rest of the cast do well as fodder for the predator but it's really all about the action.
The film contains some nice touches that develop the Predator in the same way that Aliens took a step along from Alien. The feeling that the Predator has hunted across all worlds (including the aforementioned alien) is cool as well as some other things that you get from the ending that I wouldn't spoil. But the attempt to give the Predator a sense of mercy is a bit forced. In the first it wouldn't kill an unarmed person, i.e. it always wanted sport. Here this extends to it sparing the life of an armed police woman because she is pregnant, that just seemed a little out of character to me, but I understand why they did it.
Overall this is a solid action movie with plenty of good scenes. When compared to the first movie it almost holds it's own but it lacks the sense of fear and being hunted that the first brought - this has tension but the first film have tension by the bucket.
