Predators

This macho, underachieving sci-fi actioner has (admittedly admirable) pretensions of being to the original Predator film what Aliens was to Alien. I have to say straight-up that it doesn't really succeed. As a homage to Predator it wears its loyalty too obviously on its sleeve... we have a jungle setting, a moral hispanic female lead, a bunch of army-types pitted against a hidden killer, and a whole host of smaller nods and references to the original 1987 action classic. There's even slippery Topher Grace in amongst the he-men in reference to similar characters played by Paul Reiser in Aliens and Carl Weathers in Predator.



The second paragraph is where I usually talk about the plot of the film I'm reviewing, but there isn't really much to say in this case. A bunch of tough guys land on a planet where they have to fight some predators. That's about it. Adrien Brody feels miscast as a gravelly-voiced action hero (I know they were going for something a bit less stereotypical in comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger but c'mon... Adrien Brody?!) If the film had any sense it would've had Danny Trejo as the lead, or better yet, Danny Trejo as his character from Machete as the lead. There's a subtext buried in the film about how being a good warrior means you have sacrifice your humanity to some extent but it's done in a fairly half-arsed way, and all the characters are too broad and stereotypical (the big Russian, the silent Yakuza, the nervous weakling, the token female...) to truly offer anything interesting in the way of thematic depth.



The reveal of the predators is botched, the first one we see is tied to a stake and doesn't really do anything. It also feels wrong to then show the super-predators in their own scene when every other scene in the film up until this point has been from a human point-of-view. Also, I didn't really like the design of the 'super'-predators, they looked too bulky and you can't really improve on an already perfect design, so why bother? There's a samurai-film homage where one of the good guys faces off against a predator in a field of grass, I have to admit that that was pretty cool. Also, there's a bit where our heroes fall off a cliff into some water and the camera seems to follow them all the way down... that was pretty impressive too. Predators also gets points for the unexpectedly crude line, "Die you space faggot". It's not a bad film. It just isn't as special as the first Predator film, and it so badly wants to be.



DIRECTOR: Nimrod Antal

WRITER/SOURCE: Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, based on 'characters' created by Jim and John Thomas.

KEY ACTORS: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo, Alica Braga, Walter Goggins, Laurence Fishburne



RELATED TEXTS:

- Predator, the classic 1987 action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

- Predator 2, the less well-received but still fairly solid sequel made in 1990.

- Alien Vs. Predator, a poor film followed by an even poorer sequel, Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem (which combined the monsters from both the Predator and Alien franchises to create an uber-monster).

- Aliens, the mercenary-heavy sequel to the film Alien, which influenced this attempt to relaunch Predator as a stand-alone franchise

- There are also various tie-in Predator comics, novels and computer games.