"This was a last stand. They were shooting in all directions."
As you may have guessed from some of my previous reviews, I am a huge goddamn fan of the original Predator in basically every way one can be. I also dig Predator 2, despite it's middling to poor legacy. I consider the Alien vs. Predator flicks to be dogshit, besmirching not one, but two franchises I greatly enjoy. What can be agreed on by all fans of the series is the fact that the first film is far and away the best. I saw it when I was (almost certainly) way too young to see it and have been extremely eager for them to make another genuine Predator movie for well over a decade. Robert Rodriguez had been commissioned to write a script for a third Predator movie in the mid-90's in the wake of his success with Desperado. It was shelved as being too expensive in favor of the cinematic eye-rape that was AvP. Good job, Hollywood. Knowing all this, you can imagine my excitement when I found out that the current wave of gritty rebooting had made its way to one of my favorite franchises, with Robert Rodriguez acting as co-writer and producer. I learned long ago not to get my hopes up when it comes to things like this, so I walked into the theatre last Saturday with what I would describe as cautious optimism.
Imagine my surprise at finding that the film was...just ok. Using the ol' Superman Returns loophole, Predators advertises itself as the third film in the franchise, ignoring the AvP films (although really, it essentially ignores the second film as well). Beginning with a fairly thrilling cold opening of Adrian Brody's character in freefall over a vast jungle, the film establishes that a group of extremely deadly people have been heavily armed and dropped into an unknown environment where they are being hunted by badass alien warriors. Nice and simple, right? Sort of.
It's very obvious that the makers of this film were seeking to evoke the first film in the series, and with good reason. The set up is very similar, the little call backs numerous (the line quoted at the top of the review was one of the more subtle references) and certain scenes almost qualify as a blow-for-blow remake. Where the film suffers however, is where it tries to improve. Which is admirable in a tragic sort of way. Do I hear you asking for an example? I thought so.
Ok, so one of the big hooks for this movie is the fact that all the human characters are uber-badasses from all over the world (always a neat trope). You've got Adrien Brody as a former US Special Ops soldier turned mercenary, Alice Braga as an IDF sniper (don't know how a Brazilian chick ended up playing an Israeli, but whatever), the always awesome Danny Trejo as a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, a Spetsnaz commando, an RUF death squad member, a Yakuza assassin, and a San Quentin death row inmate. The wild card comes in the form of Topher Grace, a mild-mannered doctor who is ostensibly there to serve as the team medic. Sounds pretty goddamn awesome right? Well yeah, but the major difference between this group of badasses and the badasses from the first film is that in the first film they all knew each other going in. They were old war buddies, comrades in arms, a well-oiled killing machine that takes out an entire goddamn guerrilla camp before the Predator even shows up. In the new film, no one knows anyone going in and there's the usual jockeying for leadership (although less than you'd expect) and all the mistrust and arguing that you'd expect from a situation like this. And of course, with everyone posturing and acting like hardasses, they kind of come off as...well a bunch of generic hardasses. With different accents.
In fairness to the filmmakers, they assembled a hell of a cast to inhabit these somewhat generic characters. Adrien Brody, who proved he could admirably handle action in King Kong, is surprisingly well cast as a cold-hearted mercenary who has no interest in his fellows beyond using them to survive. Other stand-outs include Walton Goggins (easily the best part of FX's Justified, and that's saying something) as the death row inmate and Louis Ozawa Changchien as the silent, but surprisingly expressive Yakuza. Alice Braga does fine as the lone female cast member, nicely averting the obvious romance angle, but awkwardly noble for the sole purpose of being a foil to Brody's fuck-everyone-but-me attitude. And something in me really wants to like Topher Grace, but he just...seems like such a bitch in everything he's in. Even more so than he's supposed to.
But fuck characterization, Steve! What about the Predators and all the action and shit! Is it awesome? Well. I will say that the designs for the new Predators are pretty snazzy. The leader sports a badass black outfit and some redesigned mandibles that are vicious to say the least. They mostly eschew the fancy new tech introduced in Predator 2 for the classic plasma cannon/wrist blade combo, and also introduce some kind of hunting dog creatures that, despite what many people on the internet seem to think (what a shock! people on the internet hate something!), were interestingly designed and effectively used. They probably should have stopped there.
So the human characters don't really figure out the situation there in/encounter the Predators for like, the first third of the movie. This sort of mirrors the pacing of the first film, but ends up dragging a bit since we know exactly whats going on and are just waiting for the movie to catch up. Whatever. Good time for characterization and all. The movie awkwardly brings the characters up to speed by revealing that the IDF woman knows all about the events of the first film, which she relays to the others once they encounter the Predators. That an IDF soldier would know about an extremely covert CIA operation that occured 20 years earlier in Central America doesn't make a ton of sense, and is especially silly given the introduction of a character in the second act who would be much more likely to have this information, but whatever, I digress. In an effort to make the Predators more interesting, the film introduces a sub-plot which reveals that there are (at least) two races of Predator which are currently at war with each other, amidst the backdrop of their usual hunting. This sounds interesting in theory, but ultimately it ends up being a little half baked and really only contributes to one fight scene toward the end that, frankly, isn't as cool as it should be.
Ultimately, what this film suffers from is mistaking streamlined for simple. The first Predator was streamlined, allowing for a slow-burn lead up to the action, great characterization (by action movie standards) and a genuine sense of awe and fear for this invisible, seemingly unstoppable hunter. Predators, on the other hand, seeks to recapture that streamlined premise, but clutters it up with a bunch of shit that should have a) been further developed or b) left out entirely. Nonetheless, it was nice to see a new Predator flick that was actually enjoyable for a majority of the running time, and will hopefully lead to something better in the future.
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