When the hunter becomes the hunted!
Posted by Team Predators on August 12, 2010
What is it with B films acquiring a veneer of respectability in their millennial reboots? We had Terminator Salvation last year with a grim Christian Bale taking all the guilty pleasure out of nice, cheesy lines. Predators, thankfully, in spite of having Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody in the lead, has lashings of fun, with much obeisance being paid to the original.
Producer Robert Rodriguez was very particular that this is a sequel to the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch, the only one to survive the bloodthirsty extraterrestrial who identifies its prey through heat signatures and collects trophies.
The film, according to Rodriguez, is called Predators to recall the other super brilliant sequel, Aliens which took the characters of the original in an entirely new direction. The film chooses to distance itself from Predators 2 and the hideous Alien Vs Predator films. While the film is nothing like Aliens, it is not terrible either.
Predators begins with a big fat bang as a disparate group of heavily-armed, comatose strangers are parachuted into a strange jungle. They regain consciousness as they hit the ground and after introductions—a death row inmate, a mercenary, a cartel enforcer, a soldier who fought in the Chechen war, an Israeli Defense Forces sniper, a Revolutionary United Front officer, a Yakuza enforcer, and a doctor—figure out they need to run for their lives as there are all manner of vicious creatures baying for their blood.
Director Nimrod Antal (he of the cool name) is a competent hand at helming action sequences as seen in his other release early this year, Armored. He uses nice, grungy industrial hues to colour his frames. The film maintains momentum and of course we can indulge our favourite game of who is going to die first and how. The African-American is clichéd and politically incorrect so for the millennial reboot, it needs to be someone else and the film does not disappoint. Yippee!
The momentum slows a bit when we encounter Lawrence Fishburne in his hideout. As a soldier who survives, he mutters his usual brand of garbled nonsense that he has been doing since his Matrix days as Orpheus.
The film is happily gory. I can only remember the MAD satire of the original where when a character chances upon the skinned bodies left behind by the Predator, he says, “I know it is hot in the jungle, but this is too much!”
While Predators signals a return to the testosterone-fuelled movies of the Eighties, the CGI ensures it is not engaging.
Of the cast, Adrien Brody lends gravitas to a muscle-bound role. He gamely growls all the “trailer” quotes with a straight face proving once again what an excellent actor he is. The rest of the cast do what they can with thin material.
Incidentally, the film has English subtitles and the mystery of what would be done with swear words is solved. Unlike on telly, where the words are beeped out, here the cast say the many cuss words while the subtitles coyly use asterisks!
