Predators
Director: Nimrod Antal
Twentieth Century Fox, July 2010
By Caesar Martini
You know, this film is not getting the attention it deserves, and I don’t understand why, because if you’re a fan of the 1987 Predator film, you should be a fan of this one too. And if you’re a fan of the Alien vs Predator films that we’ve been punished with in the past few years, then what the hell is wrong with you? Those films were terrible disgraces to their original properties. Instead of treating us to an awesome alien-killing-machine throwdown, they decided to shoot fight scenes that you could recreate by tossing Alien and Predator action figures at each other in a dark room.
One of the criticisms of Predators is that it’s not terribly new or inventive. Well Christ, the antagonist of the movie is an alien being whose sole purpose is to hunt and kill people, what more do you want? A tense political drama where one of the Predators discredits his rival at the 11th hour with embarrassing photo evidence? Or maybe one of them has to go undercover in drag as a fat black grandmother to bust a drug ring. The directions this plot can go in are limited, people. If you don’t want to see Predators hunting humans then don’t go see a Predator movie because they’re pretty one-track-minded.
At least the film tries to go in some new directions from the original. In this film, rather than the aliens coming to our house to hunt, the humans are all kidnapped and dropped onto the Predator homeworld. They use hunting “dogs” (or rather, HP Lovecraft-ian versions of dogs), there are other species they’ve brought to their planet to hunt as well, and they introduce a slightly different breed of Predator to the audience.
The protagonists are various specialists of war and death, and all are played by competent actors. Adrien Brody is a mercenary, Danny Trejo is a drug cartel enforcer, and so on. Laurence Fishburne makes an appearance as a half-crazy soldier who has been stranded on the planet, and though he turns in a good performance, his character looked suspiciously hefty for someone who has likely been subsisting on berries and tree bark for years.
The interplay between them is fairly rich as well; some characters hate each other, some are quite mysterious, and so on. They don’t know each other like in the original, so there’s more room for character development and exploration. Predators also follows a more classic action-picture formula; one that demands patience from the audience by rolling things out slowly instead of showing you an explosion every five minutes, and personally, I love that. I have grown tired of the our-audience-has-no-attention-span style of action movie, the type of movie where they’d rather bombard you with silly or impossible action instead of with things that actually make sense. It’s a refreshing change, and it’s a lot like the original movie in that way.
Where the movie fell flat for me however, is in the last ten or twenty minutes. In this time a Predator takes a hit that probably would have killed ten cows, and he brushes it off with ease. Also, there’s a Predator versus Predator fight scene that is one of the most disappointing fight scenes I’ve ever seen. It should have been this awesome fight where two really strong and mighty creatures were kicking the Jesus out of each other, but instead it resembled two fat oafs repeatedly bumping into each other and falling down. I don’t understand; the actors who played them are muscled, strapping blokes, but they fought like two people who just ran a marathon, or who just learned how to walk.
Leaving that bit aside, Predators is a good movie, similar to the first while making effort to go in some different directions, good or at least decent actors, good cinematography, the right kind of musical score and with some subtle tips of the hat to its predecessors. Well worth seeing if you liked the original Ah-nold version.
I don’t mean to be nitpicky, but I don’t think it’s the Predator homeworld the characters are dropped off on. I believe it is just some random planet that the Predators use as a game preserve.
I liked Predators a lot. A bunch of criminals fighting Predators? Sold. I had a blast.
Sean, you might be right, it’s never explicitly said in the film. But I recall reading/seeing it somewhere else in another preview or trailer or something, so I just went with that.
Owen, I’m glad you liked it too.