Predators

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."  The original Predator film is one of the most iconic films of the past 27 years, and infinitely quotable.  The original film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, and Sonny Landham.  It was a stellar cast, and combined with the story and an alien enemy, Predator was a major hit, back in 1987.  3 years later, a sequel was released, Predator 2.  With a new cast, starring Danny Glover, Gary Busey, and Bill Paxton, it looked like it was going to be another hit.  Not so.  I enjoyed it a great deal, but the problems with the movie, i.e. the blatantly obvious special effects, the overly complex story involving drug cartels and government intervention, just got in the way of what could've been a really spectacular film.  Unfortunately, by taking the Predator out of the jungle, and sticking him into the middle of a big city, it just doesn't work as well.  The Predator, played by the late Kevin Peter Hall, became even more of a bad-ass, but the rest of the film, aside from the performances of Glover and Busey, just fell flat.  And we wouldn't see another Predator until 2004, when Alien Vs. Predator came to the big screen.  What a colossal disappointment that was.  PG-13 rating?!  Half-baked story involving two of the biggest screen monsters ever, the Alien and the Predator?  While I didn't think it was as horrible as most people think it was, it simply didn't do either franchise justice.  And neither did the sequel, Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem.  While Requiem was slightly better, and that the violence was upped to the nth degree, making it extremely bloody, it was also too dark to see anything, and the throw-away characters just really brought the house down.  AVP: R was released in '07.

Now, in 2010, a new Predator film is unleashed, Predators.  Directed by Nimrod Antal, and produced by famed filmmaker, Robert Rodriguez, Predators is a much needed shot in the arm for the Predator franchise.  The film starts off with Royce(Adrien Brody) in a free-fall into an unkown jungle.  He runs into other people that have been seemingly tossed out of a plain, including a cartel enforcer(Danny Trejo), a special ops soldier(Alice Braga), a doctor(Topher Grace) and a death row inmate(Walton Goggins).  They eventually discover that they were abducted from Earth and brought to a different planet for some unknown reason.  It's actually a very interesting set-up, with fairly unique characters.  And the Predators themselves, there are several, hence the name of the movie, Predators.  Turns out that the humans were brought to the new planet to hunt.  I would never have picked Adrien Brody to play a bad-ass mercenary, he just doesn't come off that way, in most movies.  But he really pulls it off here.  Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Laurence Fishburne.  I like Laurence, he's a fantastic actor, but his character brings the movie down a little bit, but I'll get into that later.

This film has done a lot of things right, the suspense, the violence of the Predators, and even having them use "dogs" to sniff out the humans is an interesting touch.  When it comes to doling out the punishment, the film spares no expense when the shit hits the fan.  It's a little slow before getting to that point, but once it starts, it does not stop.  The visual effects are pretty good even if some of the explosions look a little iffy.  The musical score by John Debney is second to none, mostly because he keeps the themes from the original Predator film intact, while adding some new stuff of his own. 

Okay, now it's time to get to the negatives.  Laurence Fishburne.  This was nothing more than a glorified cameo, he couldn't have been in the picture for more than twenty minutes, and his character comes off as a lunatic, as someone who has survived being hunted for years.  It doesn't really work the way he explains things including some dumb thing about a blood feud.  And Fishburne just comes off just a little too over-the-top, with the character.  I will say this, when the character leaves the film, he does so in a spectacular way.  The other main issue with this film I have is a "twist" with one of the characters towards the end of the film.  I mean, really?  I won't spoil it, but I will say, that it was pretty cheap.

Overall, I was actually quite impressed with how Predators turned out, given the amount of work that went into the script and screenplay.  Nimrod Antal is a very talented director, and combined with the talents of Robert Rodriguez, he managed to make a very compelling and suspenseful thriller, that both honors the original film that came before, while adding some new stuff of it's own.  This is, without a doubt, the best Predator film, since the Arnold Schwarzenegger picture.  No question.  It blows Predator 2 and the AVP movies out of the water, although, that really wouldn't be too hard.  Predators is rated R for graphic violence and language.  I give this film a solid 9/10.  I can't wait to see where they go next.