Cinema Verdict Review: Predators

Predators

OPENING: 07/09/2010

STUDIO: Fox

RUN TIME: 106 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Fear is Reborn

Opening Statement
While I’m a fan of John McTiernan’s savage sci-fi thriller Predator, pretty much everything else about the Predator franchise to date has been uniformly unimpressive. Sure, Predator 2 and even the two Alien vs. Predator movies have their defenders, but to me they all played like weak attempts cash in on the popularity of the original. Now we have Nimrod Antal’s Predators, which easily bests the other sequels but still fails to match the first film.

Facts of the Case
The film begins with our hero (Adrien Brody, The Darjeeling Limited) falling from the sky. He doesn’t seem to know how he got in this predicament, but soon a parachute opens and he floats into a mysterious jungle. Within moments, several others are floating in around him. Brody and the others (a motley crew played by Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov, Louis Ozawa Changchien and the spectacularly-named Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) tensely introduce themselves, and soon discover that they all have one thing in common: they’re hardened individuals well-equipped for a situation like this. Well, everyone except Topher Grace, who is a mild-mannered doctor.

After some searching, the group makes a startling discovery: they’re not on planet earth anymore. It seems they’ve been transported to another world and dumped into some sort of game preserve. The incredibly deadly aliens that brought them to this place are planning on hunting the humans for sport. And so the fight for survival begins.

The Evidence
It’s clear that those involved in making Predators are big fans of McTiernan’s 1987 film. The jungle setting is near-identical, the structure is very similar and various references are made to that iconic film. Director Nimrod Antal and producer Robert Rodriguez make an impressively valiant effort at recapturing what made the first film so memorable, and they almost succeed. Like the first movie, this one waits a pretty long time before it actually allows the monstrous Predators to appear. This is meant to build suspense, but the one thing the film fails to take into account is that we’re already very familiar with what the Predators are and how they work. Scenes that are nearly mirror images of scenes from the first movie just don’t work as well simply because we’ve already seen them.

Lest you think that I regard the original Predator as a flawless piece of cinema, let me assure you that isn’t the case. That movie has some significant flaws, but it’s quite well-directed and the primitive final half-hour is strong enough to erase one’s memories of the weaker moments. Predators is weak in precisely the areas where the original was strong, as the movie just sort of runs out of steam by the time Adrien Brody gets into mud-coated Predator-hunting mode. The action scenes are directed in a rather generic, uninvolving manner, so it’s only natural that the action-heavy third act would be the weakest.

I had hopes that a gifted actor like Adrien Brody might bring something meaty to the proceedings, but Brody proves surprisingly bland in the central role. Beefing up a bit and adopting Christian Bale’s Batman rasp, Brody humorlessly stomps through the proceedings without making much of an impression. Most of the other actors are one-dimensional character types who each bring a single element of personality to the proceedings. There are some highlights, though: Walton Goggins is gleefully creepy in his turn as a serial killer, while Laurence Fishburne melds his usual gravitas with an appealing loopiness as a man who has been surviving on this planet entirely longer than any human should have to.

If Predators is weak where Predator was strong, it’s only fair to note that Predators is occasionally strong where Predator was weak. Some of the less explosive moments in the film actually manage to resonate, particularly a brief scene between Brody and Braga in which they contemplate whether this new environment is actually better-suited to humans such as themselves. The characters are constantly forced to choose between survival and clinging to whatever they have left of their humanity. They are presented with variations on this choice on numerous occasions, and it’s quietly moving every time.

Closing Statement
I do genuinely appreciate the effort Antal and Rodriguez have put into restoring the franchise; and those who are fans of the series in general should find this one of the more satisfying efforts. I can’t really recommend it to those who aren’t already big fans of Predator, but you could certainly do a lot worse at the movies right now.

The Verdict
6/10

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