I picked this for the Blind Spot poll this year because it’s one of a number of “classic” ’80s action flicks that I haven’t seen (the whole era is a blind spot for me), and it was one that came up more often than the others in conversations of actually pretty good ones. I knew a little bit about the premise from my husband, but went in pretty blind aside from that.
In a way, this is two movies in one. The first movie follows a bunch of commandos led by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers going into the jungle to rescue some hostages or something. It’s not really that important, even though it takes up a good chunk of the movie and ends in a pretty wild gunfight. The fact that this section is pretty long and leisurely paced should probably bother me, but it didn’t – it doesn’t feel like rote backstory or character set-up, but like a decent premise for an action movie that just gets cut off half way through because a killer alien shows up and starts picking off our commandos for no apparent reason.