The original Predator remains a classic action film. It starred two future governors in Jesse “The Body” Ventura and Arnold in all his one-liner glory (”Stick around!”). Throw in Carl Weathers, great character actors like Bill Duke and Sonny Landham, and Lethal Weapon scribe Shane Black and you’ve got a testosterone heavy ensemble ready. The reputation of the first picture was tarnished by a less than stellar sequel and a pair of ill-advised Alien vs. Predator crossovers. Predators looks to right old wrongs.
The film is based on an old spec script written by Robert Rodriguez back in the mid-90’s. Screenwriters Alex Litvak and Michael Finch used that as a template with Rodriguez serving as producer and Nimrod Antal as director.
Predators literally drops the audience into the thick of things along with the protagonists. We watch Adrien Brody, as a no-nonsense mercenary, plummeting towards a dense jungle. He runs into an assortment of highly-trained soldiers and ruthless killers. They include a sniper for the Israel Defense Forces (Alice Braga), an enforcer for the Mexican drug cartels (Danny Trejo), a death row inmate (Walt Goggins), a Russian spetsnaz troop (former UFC fighter Oleg Taktarov), a member of a Sierra Leone death squad (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), and a silent gangster for the Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien). Topher Grace is the only one who sticks out like a sore thumb as a nerdy and seemingly harmless doctor.
They quickly realize they are stuck on an alien gaming preserve, being hunted by the Predators armed with advanced technology such as cloaking devices and cheesy infrared scanners.
Less than successful sequels generally verge too drastically from the previous picture. In such cases, a third film will go back to formula. Back to the Future was mainly about the love story between Marty McFly’s parents with time travel a secondary plot point. The sequel was all about time travel turning it into a cluttered and confusing mess. Though set in the Old West, Back to the Future III again focused on a love story involving Doc Brown. Predator 2 tried to change things up by placing the Predator into an urban setting. Predators returns them to the jungle in slightly different fashion.
Those of you who’ve seen the first Predator will find many familiar elements to the threequel. There’s a scaredy Latino woman and a big dude with an even bigger Gatling gun. One character challenges a Predator to a knife fight while another covers himself in mud. Composer John Debney borrows heavily from the musical cues of Alan Silvestri’s original score.
The film wastes no time in kicking off the action. There are no opening credits, no text crawl or exposition. It keeps things simple as well. You won’t even learn most of the characters’ names unless you read the end credits. They have no time for introductions and the audience doesn’t need them. They are fodder for the Predators so we are spared any lengthy back stories. Instead, the filmmakers keep the focus on the action as we get several great sequences. Hungarian director Nimrod Antal made his debut with Kontroll, following that up with the horror flick Vacancy and last year’s underrated Armored.
Antal directs in an old school fashion staying away from modern techniques like shaky cam and breakneck editing that only serve to confuse the action. Antal also forgoes heavy CGI, using it only as a way to accentuate practical effects. Predators was shot on location in Hawaii and the real jungles are a positive antithesis to the Day-Glo garishness of Pandora. The film is hard R too. It’s appropriately violent, but not overly gruesome.
Adrien Brody may seem an unlikely action hero. He’s not as physically imposing as Arnold, but he’s more than believable as a tough guy. The other actors do well in their roles as well with Topher Grace bringing some understated comic relief. Walt Goggins is also there for comic relief, but in an over-the-top fashion. His good ol’ boy character very similar to the one he played on The Shield. Laurence Fishburne chews up his scenes and spits them out in an all too brief role as a soldier who’s been on the planet a little too long.
Predators may not reinvent the wheel, but it didn’t need to. This is the kind of good, dumb fun that’s been lacking in today’s action film. The only missing ingredient would be quotable lines like, ”I ain’t got time to bleed,” and ”Stick around!”
Rating: ** ½
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