The Most Harmless Things

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Predator, martial arts, and weapons.

PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS (2025)

Did director Dan Trachtenberg’s 2022 Predator movie Prey, which was set in 1719, leave you anxious to see more Predator movies that were set throughout history? I know there was a lot of excitement for that idea among Predator fans – and Trachtenberg certainly delivered with his second Predator movie, the animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers. This one packs three different historical Predator stories (plus a bonus) into 80 minutes, meaning we get four stories that are all killer (appropriate, given the title) and no filler! The least interesting thing about some of the Predator movies are the extended build-ups to the Predator action, and that’s not something you need to worry about very much in this one. Each historical story takes time to introduce its lead character(s) and show them in action, then the Predator shows up to ruin their day.

A segment called The Shield takes us back to 841 Scandinavia, when Viking warrior Ursa led her clan on a rampage of revenge, seeking the kill the man who murdered her father years before. Ursa gets her revenge – and then the Predator drops in. Trachtenberg is always seeking to give people something they’ve never seen before with his additions to the Predator franchise, and even within this animated anthology (which in itself is something we’ve never seen before in the Predator franchise) he was dropping in new situations – like the fact that Ursa and the Predator have their final confrontation underwater.

The most popular suggestion for a historical Predator movie is one that would see the alien hunter taking on ninjas and samurai, and that’s what we get with the segment called The Sword, which is set in 1600s Japan. It’s really cool, but I have to say, watching this fight play out in animation does not keep me from still wanting to see it in live action.

The Bullet takes us to 1942 North Africa, where the Predator shows up in the middle of a World War II battle – and here’s something else that’s entirely new for the franchise: the battle with the Predator is entirely aerial. He’s flying around in his own aircraft, blasting fighter aircraft with a harpoon launcher.

The Predators are defeated in each one of these segments. Ursa defeats her attacker, shinobi Kenji wins his fight with the aid of his samurai brother, and U.S. Navy fighter pilot John J. Torres destroys the Predator aircraft... but then it’s revealed that Predators keep people who have defeated their hunters in suspended animation, sometimes for centuries, before making them face each other in gladiator matches while wearing explosive collars. Some elements of this segment, called The Battle, seem to be lifted out of the original screenplay Robert Rodriguez wrote for Predators in 1996 (which got a complete overhaul by other writers before the 2010 movie was made), as that also had Predators holding gladiator matches and riding around in hovercraft. The ideas are presented in a much better way in this movie than they were in that script.

Overall, Predator: Killer of Killers is a lot of fun and a great option to turn to when you want a quick fix of Predator action. It is kind of weird that each of the characters manages to kill a Predator within maybe fifteen minutes of realizing these things exist, but that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that these are each short stories that need to get through the scenario rather quickly. So don’t question that part of it, just sit back and enjoy the show.

TIGER CLAWS III (1999)

In Tiger Claws, detectives Tarek Richards (Jalal Merhi) and Linda Masterson (Cynthia Rothrock) teamed up to take down a serial killer who was murdering martial arts masters. They crossed paths with that serial killer again in Tiger Claws II, where Linda was kept out of the action for most of the running time. And if you were disappointed that Rothrock was largely sidelined in the second movie, you’ll really be upset with the third movie, which kills off her character within the first 20 minutes! The explanation for this shocking turn of events is that Rothrock was pregnant during the production and the filmmakers had to figure out a way to write her character out of the action. Killing her is not the approach that I would have taken, as many viewers will find that to be an unforgivable sin, and there’s still more than an hour of movie left after it happens. (Stick around; they'll attempt to fix their mistake in a ridiculous way.)

Tiger Claws II brought in the supernatural element of a time corridor being opened to ancient China, and the story writer/director J. Stephen Maunder cooked up for Tiger Claws III has a similar element to it. Loren Avedon plays a villain named Stryker, who performs a ceremony that brings three seemingly immortal ancient assassins that have to ability to deflect bullets and blast electricity from their hands into the modern world. Stryker then sets out to use these assassins as his personal henchmen so he can take over a local criminal organization.

Linda is killed when the assassins make their entrance, so Tarek is out for revenge – and to be able to defeat his supernatural enemies, he learns a special martial art from Master Jin (Carter Wong), the man who trained and was later betrayed by Stryker.

Tiger Claws III is a fun action flick with a goofy but entertaining story. The fact that Rothrock was written out in such a way is a bummer, but it wasn’t a complete deal breaker for me, and the stuff with the supernatural assassins tends to be pretty amusing.

WEAPONS (2025)

Writer/director Zach Cregger has said that he takes the Stephen King approach to writing: he doesn’t plan or outline his stories before he starts writing, he just dives in and lets the story go wherever it wants. I can’t imagine doing that with a novel, but in that case, at least there’s plenty of space to play around and work things out (especially when you’re Stephen King and no one’s going to chastise you about your word count). Taking that approach is even more mind-boggling to me, because there are more rules to follow when writing for the screen. But Cregger says “no thanks” to outlines, and that’s evident in his movies. His first horror movie, Barbarian, had an unusual structure and got crazier and crazier as it went along, and the same can be said for his second horror movie, Weapons. (As you can see, he also has an appreciation for unexpected yet generic titles.)

In this case, the story is told in chapters, each one focused on a different character, showing their interactions with other characters in the story from different perspectives. Julia Garner is Justine Gandy, the elementary school teacher who catches a lot of heat when seventeen of the eighteen children in her class go missing. Each of them left their home at 2:17 a.m. and ran off into the night. Josh Brolin is Archer Graff, whose son is one of the missing children, and he’s very determined to do what the local authorities don’t seem to be able to do: find his kid. Alden Ehrenreich is Paul Morgan, Justine’s police officer ex-boyfriend. Austin Abrams is a drug-addicted thief named James. Cary Christopher is Alex Lilly, the only child in Justine’s class who didn’t disappear, and Amy Madigan is Alex’s bizarre Aunt Gladys.

Those are the characters we focus on as the movie goes along, but Benedict Wong has a notable role as the school principal, and there are quick appearances from the likes of Sara Paxton, Justin Long, and June Diane Raphael, with Toby Huss playing the police captain.

As Cregger warned (or promised) us before the movie was released, the mystery of the missing children is just what gets the story rolling and things get much wilder from there. That’s true – as you can see when Aunt Gladys shows up, or when a character seems to have become a bug-eyed, violent, unstoppable zombie.

Like Barbarian, Weapons keeps switching directions as it goes along, and yet it all feels like a coherent ride by the time it’s over. The explanations are satisfactory and so is the bloody climax. It's always intriguing, sometimes it's creepy, and sometimes it's pretty funny. Cregger’s approach to writing is mind-boggling to me, but I can’t say he’s doing it wrong because the results, so far, have been two horror movies that I really enjoyed.

GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK (1978)

The down-home trucker action movie Breaker! Breaker! gave Chuck Norris his first starring role, but it was his second starring vehicle, Good Guys Wear Black, that he considered to be his breakthrough project. It’s easy to understand why; while Breaker! Breaker! was made cheaply and quickly, this one had some prestige, with director Ted Post – who had previously directed the Clint Eastwood classics Hang ‘Em High and Magnum Force – at the helm, working from a script that was crafted by Joseph Fraley, Bruce Cohn, and the Tony Award and Olivier Award-winning, Oscar-nominated Children of a Lesser God playwright Mark Medoff.

Norris plays Major John T. Booker, who was in an elite group of CIA assassins called the Black Tigers during the Vietnam War. They wore all-black outfits; thus the title of the movie. In 1973, United States Senator Conrad Morgan (James Franciscus) was involved with the peace negotiations and made a deal with a North Vietnamese negotiator to give the country some “sacrifices” as a way to sweeten the peace talks. That included setting the Black Tigers up for what they believed was a rescue mission, but was meant to be a suicide mission. Problem was, a character played by Chuck Norris was in the mix, so multiple Black Tigers survived the set-up... they just never knew who set them up.

Jump ahead five years and Booker is a political science professor at UCLA who speeds around a racetrack in a Porsche during his down time. Then a reporter named Margaret (Anne Archer) comes into his life, asking questions about the Black Tigers and displaying knowledge of top secret information that she shouldn’t have access to. Coinciding with her arrival, Booker learns that the surviving members of the Black Tigers are being hunted down and knocked off one by one. He’s highly suspicious of Margaret, but that doesn’t keep him from sleeping with her more than once.

Together, Booker and Margaret set out to find the other Black Tigers and figure out what’s going on, who’s killing them off. Of course, this puts Booker on a collision course with the killers – and eventually leads to him finding out that Conrad Morgan, who’s now on track to become Secretary of State, is not a good guy at all.

Good Guys Wear Black is not quite what you expect to see when you put on the average Chuck Norris movie. Sure, Norris gets to kick some people in the movie, and there’s even a moment where he kicks someone through the windshield of a moving car, but for the most part, this is a surprisingly earnest political thriller. Aside from the opening firefight showing the Black Tigers in Vietnam and a couple spikes of action on the way to the end credits, there is not much in the way of excitement in this movie. Post and the writers were more focused on intrigue, meaning there’s a whole lot of chit-chat about top secret missions and backroom dealings.

If you want to see Chuck Norris action, you’d be better off turning to a different movie (I’ll always highly recommend Lone Wolf McQuade), but this is a good one if you’re in the mood for something more sedate.