Bro's Flows

BROTHAMAN’S GONNA WORK OUT

In the 1980s, Everyone loved blockbuster action films.

Everyone loved Big Action and Big Explosions.

Everyone loved PREDATOR.

Everyone loved Arnold Schwarzenneger.

What’s not to love about that film? It was a win-win for everyone:

Actors, fans, movie companies. It stands to reason a sequel would be a

no-brainer.

PREDATOR 2 was released in 1990. For the record, it did make a profit, just not the grand scale profit producers wanted. To this day, it is considered the lowest grossing film in the Predator franchise, opening to a polarizing range of mixed reviews right out the gate. Forbes magazine called it “an underperforming sequel.” And the biggest complaint: “Where’s Arnold?” In all fairness, it was the Terminator that said “I’ll be back,” not Schwarzennegger’s Dutch (his character in Predator).

I didn’t see Predator 2 at the show, but I rented it the day it came out on VHS, and my bromance with this sequel flick—emphasis on the BRO—happened practically at first sight. I own the film and have watched it several times. You may wonder why on earth would I watch Predator 2 several times. My answer is the same today as it was back in 1990: Brothaman overcame. Period.

The well-advertised premise was to have the Predator invade an urban

jungle, the term ‘urban’ often serving as code for an inner city setting

with minority characters. That’s exactly what Predator 2 serves up.

Top biller Danny Glover, hot off the success of the first two Lethal

Weapon films, lead a cast of minority actors (Ruben Blades and Maria

Conchita Alonzo) as cops dealing with a gang war between Jamaicans

and Columbians. All hell really breaks loose when our alien antagonist

drops in and starts picking off gang members on both sides before

adding cops to its kill list. After all is said and done, it comes down to a

mano a mano between Danny Glover (whose Lethal Weapon character

wasn’t shy about admitting he was “too old for this shit”) and an alien

being whose only purpose was to hunt and kill.

Schwarzennegger defeated the Predator with a combination of

fisticuffs and military battle tactics. And let’s be honest: We were so in

love with Schwarzennegger’s larger-than-life screen presence at that

point, we would probably have accepted him going up against Kong or

Godzilla. But Danny Glover—middle-aged and certainly not

musclebound like Schwarzennegger, armed only with his department

revolver or maybe the shotgun he wielded against Columbian gang

members early in the film—him going up against the futuristic

weaponry and superhuman strength of the alien Predator? Naw, try

selling me sand in the Sahara instead.

However, when I watched this movie for the first time, I saw something I didn’t even realize I needed to see: I saw what a determined, strong-willed black man can do when up against impossible odds. Glover played the character of Lieutenant Mike Harrigan a little over the top at times, but not in a way that made the character clownish or dim-witted. Our first sight of Harrigan in the film is that of a weary warrior deep in the trenches trying his best to impose some order and sanity upon a world that had gone completely insane. He was not a get-along token with no skin in the game, and he was certainly not a sacrificial lamb whose only purpose in the film was to be killed off so someone else could live happily-ever-after.

Largely a product of his environment, he’s belligerent, maybe impatient and a bit reckless and somewhat lacking in decorum. But just as we see those flaws, we also see his fearlessness, his focus, his strength and determination, his cleverness, his independence, his results-oriented mindset, his respect for law and order, and his unyielding will to survive. But mostly, we see him triumphant in the end. We see him come out a winner in a way that I was able and happy to accept.

I think of Danny Glover in Predator 2, and I think of my favorite verse from the William Ernest Henley poem INVICTUS:

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced or cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.

Bloody but Unbowed. Damn, I still like the sound of that.

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