REVIEW: ‘Predators’

In the pre-Web era, the main way I found out about cool upcoming movies was either by Starlog Magazine, or by the buttons theater workers would be given by studios. The button I saw for John McTiernan’s “Predator” was damned cool – “Schwarzenegger Vs Predator: The Main Event Begins June 12 (1987).” You’d better believe I was first in line that June to see The Big Man get beat down by Kevin Peter Hall as the Predator.

“Predators” isn’t taking anyone by surprise, though the bar has been lowered quite a bit. A long gap between 1989′s “Predator 2″ and the two mind-numbingly sub-par “Alien Vs Predator” movies have dulled fans’ expectations. While Robert Rodriguez’s crew have injected life and brains and brawn back into the franchise, there’s still a few instances where “Predators” lets us down.

The movie opens with Royce (Adrien Brody) waking up to find himself falling from the sky. He lands safely in an unfamiliar jungle, and in short order discovers seven other people who were plucked from their lives. They’re all trained killers – an Israeli soldier (Alice Braga), a drug cartel enforcer (Danny Trejo), a convicted murderer (Walton Goggins) and so on – except the odd man out, Topher Grace’s seemingly meek physician. A cynical mercenary, Royce connects the dots quickly and figures out an alien race has abducted them. Instead of getting anally probed, they’re set up as live game, hunted by an unknown set of hunters, who we know are Predators. Can they stay alive long enough to figure out how to get back to Earth?

There’s a lot to dig about the revitalized take on “Predator,” with numerous visual, dialogue and scoring nods to the original movie. Director Nimrod Antal doesn’t lean so heavily on the original material that it feels derivative, and the script (working from Robert Rodriguez’s original storyline, it’s co-written by Alex Litvik and Michael Finch) builds up a good head of steam in the first half of the movie.

Anyone worried about seeing Adrien Brody in an action role should rest easy. Royce is a glowering, “two-steps-ahead” killer, and Brody plays him perfectly. The remaining characters are a mixed bag, with varying degrees of depth given to the human bad-asses. It speaks well of the casting that each of these folks are people we want to know more about.

While the first hour of the movie moves along well and gives a satisfying punch, it begins to fall apart in the final acts, beginning with the appearance of Laurence Fishburne. A previous abductee, Fishburne’s survivor is more than a little deranged from his time fighting off the Predators. Sadly, it’s a wasted, “why the hell is this in the movie?” performance, not nearly up to his previous work. Abysmal.

The bigger problem sits with the Predators. With the original movie (and, to a slightly lesser extent, the underrated 1990 sequel), a lone Predator is a menace, a nigh-unstoppable force hell-bent on killing anything it sets its sights on. When you multiply the menace, it dilutes the effect. Either these Predators aren’t nearly as good of hunters, or they’re dumbing down the hunt when it’s on their own turf. If I’m part of a hunting-culture alien race, with that array of weaponry and camouflage, I’m using tactics and strategy along with my brethren to kill off my prey. These Predators do very little of this, and it takes part of the menace out of the aliens.

Even with its faults, “Predators” is still a better-than average bit of summer fun. It’s an enjoyable return to a beloved franchise, even if that return could have been a bit sharper.