I'm in agreement with the both of you. I liked it, but it also was definitely out of place. I could see if maybe they placed the Predator hunting down people from say a small village. But in the middle of LA is definitely odd.
An interesting idea could be one of those places where lost tribes live, with no contact with modern people. Maybe you have some people studying the tribe from a distance, when shit starts to get real with the Pred. They can't really intervene or the tribe will kill them, so they have to play a bit of background chess against the Predator. Sounds like a fan-fic for another day, though.