.co.uk

(This review contain spoilers. Consider yourself warned.)

So, Predators... Is it a reboot, reimagining, remake, or what? Well, having literally just left the cinema, I'd say, disappointingly, that it felt more like a mediocre imitation of John McTiernan's original from 1987, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.

O.K., so it's officially a sequel to Predator and Predator 2 (so say producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal) that attempts to distance itself from those (awful) Aliens Vs. Predator films. That was a good start, I thought, seen as though I had been waiting twenty years for "Predator 3".

In terms of storyline, Predators was basically the first movie all over again, following a group of elite killers being hunted by various Yautjas (the species name for the "Predators") in the jungle. Sure, the humans were on the Predators' planet this time around, headed by ex-military soldier Royce (Adrien Brody), and there were actually three Predators and a number of Predator "Dogs" doing the hunting, but the concept was still the same.

This particular aspect of the film didn't bother me, though. Things were kept nice and simple, and the script didn't attempt to play on the mystery of the type of creature the humans were up against (there's only so much you can do with the hunter vs. prey scenario, and audiences have become more and more familiar with The Predators over the years that the fear factor has kind of worn off). There was a nice old-school feel to the film thanks to the tongue-in-cheek dialogue, minimal CGI special effects and John Debney's emulation of the classic Alan Silvestri score.

What really bothered me about Predators was the lack of real suspense and excitement, the decision to kill off the likable characters before the annoying ones, and the various imitations (not homages -- there's a difference) of the original movie.

I expected more from the use of the alien planet, for example. The prospect of a Predators movie taking place on the alien planet had excited me for years, but there was no real sense of danger or ambiguity surrounding an isolated environment -- like we got with the jungle in Predator. The planet also looked pretty much identical to the jungle that we saw on earth back in 1987; the only thing that appeared distinguishable was the sun, which apparently never moved (so said Royce).

The action scenes were also uninspiring. The first bullets were fired when those Predator "dogs" came onto the scene, though the humans somehow managed to waste a majority of their ammunition after they missed their targets stood only a few feet away. There was a one-on-one sword battle between a Yakuza assassin (Louis Ozawa Changchien) and a Predator that wasn't anywhere near as good as it should've been. Oh, and remember the trailer for the film, which seems to suggest twelve laser sites on Adrian Brody at one time? Well, it lied: There was just one.

Another thing that annoyed me was the order in which the human characters were killed. Apart from Brody's semi-decent performance as the lead good guy, the best actors in the film were Danny Trejo and Lawrence Fishburne. Trejo (a fan favourite) was easily the biggest badass of the bunch, starring as Cuchillo, a Mexican drug dealer who liked to carry two machine guns around with him just because he could -- though, unbelievably, he was the first one to be executed. Fishburne, a stranded U.S. Air Cavalry Soldier, was introduced just after half way, but was taken out after only twenty minutes by a Predator's plasma gun, which, for some reason, made his entire body explode with a single shot (I've never seen the technology do such a thing in the movies that came before).

It may be something to do with the budget why the biggest names were killed first, but with such respectable actors on board you would've thought the filmmakers would have took full advantage of their talents. But no, instead the audience was left to suffer the screen time of Topher Grace as Edwin, a seemingly-innocent doctor who (in a very contrived turn of events) happened to be a serial killer, and Walton Goggins as an increasingly-annoying death-row inmate (I was really hoping this guy would get decapitated first).

What really pissed me off most of all, though, was how many times Predators wanted so much to be like Predator... and failed.

A majority of the characters, for example, were obvious replications of the heroes from the first movie. Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov) was supposed to be the hardnut of the group carrying a chain gun (a la Jesse Ventura as Blain); Stans (Walton Goggins) was the sexual joker of the group (Shane Black as Hawkins); Hanzo (Changchien) was the quiet man of the bunch, and seemingly the ONLY ONE that had some sort of spiritual connection with the alien (Sonny Landham as Billy); and Isabelle (Alice Braga) as the black ops sniper, was the token female of the group who knew more about the creature than she first let on (Anna (Elpidia Carrillo)).

The film was also littered with so many past Predator quotes. Isabelle, for one, screamed "You set us up!" Dutch-style to Royce; then, prior to the final showdown, the hero covered himself in mud and shouted “Do it now! Kill me!” to imitate the big Austrian once again.

You can understand Rodriguez and Antal and the screenwriters wanting to capture the essence of the first movie, but that isn't to say they did it very well. My frustration was finally topped off when the credits began to roll and I heard the Little Richard song 'Long Tall Sally', seemingly just thrown in there (it felt completely out of place to the serious tone of the final few scenes).

In conclusion, Predators wasn't terribly bad, but it wasn't exactly satisfactory either. It did a fair job at getting the franchise back on track after those AVP turkeys. I'd rank it above those two films, and Alien Resurrection while we're at it, but below the first two Predators and the first three Aliens. Predators came with nostalgia, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I thought it was a great movie. Far from it. After waiting twenty years, I left the cinema feeling disappointed and frustrated, expecting much more.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2010.