Predator's Prey
Rise of the Predator
S.E.A.L. Patrol
Seal Patrol
SEAL Patrol - Operation: Predator
| Tagline(s): | When All Else Fails...They Don't. |
This movie has no SEALS (or seals) and nobody goes on patrol. What it does have is a lot of jump cuts and camera shake, which the director confuses with Cool. This movie cares a lot about Cool, as evidenced by the Tom Clancy style subtitles at the beginning of every scene telling us the elapsed time before or since The Incident.
18 hours before The Incident, an elite mercenary team hires on a new member. He is Hazed, impresses the vets with his Cool Under Hazing, is Accepted Onto The Team, and told How Things Work. The Incident: An underground lab in Kazakhstan undertaking a billionaire's secret research project to create limitless energy from an alternate universe goes horribly wrong, opening a portal for alien creatures to enter the lab and kill (almost) everybody by dragging them screaming off screen, after which the set crew throws a bucket of chunky red paint at a nearby wall. The billionaire, who acts like Elon Musk and looks like Harrison Ford, is interrupted by his Personal Assistant just as an important interview was reaching the key moment of him promising the reporter the best 19 minutes of her life. I think this is supposed to show how Cool he is. The PA informs him that they have lost communication with the lab and, realizing that they're in a monster movie, suggests that he remotely activate the base's self-destruct. The billionaire, acting like he's in the real world or something, declines to "destroy a billion dollar investment because the phones are down." Instead, he decides to hire the world's best mercenary team to find out what's going on and extract the chief scientist. He also assigns a mission specialist to join them, both because they need a female team member and so that she can get the call in her extremely Cool, glass-walled, room-sized walk-in shower and the audience can see some boobies. Her special abilities and reason for being included are explained and are absolutely the furthest thing from Cool. Nonetheless, the mercs' handler sets up in the the billionaire's Cool Dubai penthouse while the rest of the team parachutes into Kazakhstan. They find the surface installation of the lab overrun by seventeen Chechen Terrorists, who have killed all of the guards except one. The mercs are just barely in time to save him, but Cooly decline to do so to avoid giving away their position and learning what the hell is going on in this movie. They then expertly take out the Chechens, despite being outnumbered three-to-one, so that we can see how badass they are and, hopefully, won't notice that for the rest of the movie they're nothing but Monster Treats. Chechens dispatched, they enter the installation.
At a trim 75 minutes total running time, this movie does not fuck around. They split up, one team going to the radio room to fix the radio, the other to the lab to find the scientist. The team in the radio room establishes a Zoom call with the billionaire and immediately get killed by the monster. In reaction, the PA and the handler shoot each other, and the billionaire Coolly shoots the Zoom call. Meanwhile, the mercs find the scientist, who it's their mission to rescue, and respond by body-slamming him to the ground and zip-tieing him. For his part, he tells them that they're all going to die if they don't lock themselves in the lab but refuses to explain why, not because he's pissed off at being thrown to the ground and zip-tied, but because they won't believe them. Package in hand, the mercs go to the radio room, where they find chunky bits of their friends. The billionaire, meanwhile, decides to activate the base's self-destruct after all. Just then, however, the power goes out, taking both the lights and the self-destruct with it. The mercs locate an exit which can be used without power (the main entrance is an elevator), but it's on the other side of the base. There is a running battle through the facility, where many thousands of rounds of ammunition are ineffectually fired at the creature in the ceiling and behind the wall, while it turns the mercs into chunky red paint. The scientist's daughter is found and rescued, after which he immediately dies. She is soon mortally wounded, but they manage to drag her to semi-safety so we can all feel bad as she expires tragically. The mercs split up so that they can get killed easier; newbie gets slapped down for pointing out that this incredibly stupid plan is incredibly stupid. There is a climactic final battle. Newbie and the mission specialist escape as the base explodes like it just spent 19 minutes interviewing the billionaire. Two weeks later, newbie sneaks into the billionaire's Dubai penthouse and faces the ultimate test -- will he act according to the aesthetic of this movie and Coolly shoot the billionaire in the back of the head or will he inexplicably turn around and leave him be? If you'd been paying even the most cursory attention, you've known the answer since 18 hours before The Incident, but the movie treats the newbie's choice as a shocking revelation that will leave you trembling with awe at the Coolness of it all.
Nicolas Aaron Mezzanatto
Rich McDonald
Kristina Anapau
Eric Roberts
James C. Burns
Roark Critchlow
James C. Morris
Danny James
