Familiar Predators a Decent Hunting Party
A man (Adrien Brody) awakens to find himself in freefall. The air whooshes by, seconds pass like hours, the ground growing closer and closer by the instant. Almost as if on queue a parachute opens with a violent rush, the figure understandably shaken by the events he’s sadistically just been forced to experience.
Adrien Brody and Alice Braga in Predators © 20th Century Fox
Thus opens producer (and original story writer, although Alex Litvak and Michael Finch get the official screenplay credit) Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Sin City) and director Nimród Antal’s (Kontroll, Vacancy) Predators, a direct sequel to director John McTiernan and star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 action/sci-fi hit Predator. It’s a magnificently unsettling way to start things off, the feelings of uncertainty, paranoia and worry facing Brody’s nameless soldier the same ones quickly engulfing the audience.
But as good as this start is I’d be lying if I said the filmmakers are able to maintain those sensations any longer than a couple of minutes. From the moment the rest of the film’s ragtag group of mercenaries, killers and psychopaths (including Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins and Rodriguez regular Danny Trejo) also drop from the sky things fall into a pretty familiar place rather quickly. Within quick succession this disheveled company manages to discover they’re being hunted and they have to work together if they’re going to survive. They also manage to work out they’re no longer on Earth, coming to grips with stunning ease that they’re the victims of an alien abduction whose soul aim is to make them the stars of interstellar version of Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game.
Be that all as it may, truth be told I had a grand time watching this reboot. It didn’t matter much to me that Rodriguez and Antal hadn’t so much crafted a sequel to Predator so much as they’d constructed an off-world remake, Brody taking on the Schwarzenegger role while the rest of the cast attempted to fill the shoes of Carl Weather, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke et al. While there are definite differences between the films, the basic narrative hasn’t changed, and even with a schizophrenic Laurence Fishburne wandering around offering up advice fans of the original aren’t going to find much new here to ruminate on.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. Obviously that first effort’s red herring subplot about taking on South American terrorists and rescuing government officials isn’t part of the narrative here. To take up that part of the running time the filmmakers have constructed scenes of the eight strangers getting to know one another in typical tough guy fashion (hurling insults, sharing baby pictures, beating each other to a bloody pulp) as well an escape sequence featuring carnivorous Predator hunting dogs. There’s also a set piece involving deadly homemade jungle traps as well as a visit to a dilapidated alien spaceship, all of it meant to promote character development but in reality only exists to warrant a feature length running time.
No, the basic plot is essentially the same one that Jim and John Thomas came up with 23 years ago, only this time the action is set in an intergalactic game preserve and instead of a single Predator facing off against our heroes now there are three. But even that is a stretch as although there is strength in numbers everyone seems content brawling mano y mano, and other than a second act bit at a hunting camp the only time multiple predators show up is when they have designs on fighting each other, not the humans.
I’m making it sound like I didn’t enjoy Predators. Just the opposite, actually, for even though the over familiarity is a tiny bi annoying overall the film is so well made, so agreeable performed and so refreshingly straightforward and direct the final product is tough to dislike. It is apparent right from the get-go that Rodriguez and Antal want to treat this property with a seriousness Predator 2 and the Alien vs. Predator features did not, imbuing things with a roughneck realism that’s downright revitalizing.
Could the final product have been better? Sure, especially considering how sound the premise is. For all the pre-release buzz and excitement this movie is not what Aliens was to Alien, and while it is unquestionably better than any of the previous three films starring the title character it still can’t hold a candle to McTiernan and Schwarzenegger’s recklessly timeless original.
But it is fun and I did have a good time, and as matinee entertainment is concerned Predators does deliver on a fairly respectable scale. Just don’t go in expecting anything more than a moderately enjoyable diversion, those rushing into the theatre with higher aspirations then that will only have themselves to blame when at the end disappointment is the only prey they’re ultimately able to hunt down.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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