Whilst Nimrod Antal isn’t the greatest director on the planet (his most recognised work before this was the Luke Wilson movie Vacancy which was…ok) but you know that he’s a good enough director to pin a yarn that is infinitely better than the last Predator outing: Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem, a hot contender for one of the worst movies ever made. What I was surprised about however is that despite its faults, of which there are many, he and producer Robert Rodriquez have fashioned a film that not only feels like a Predator movie but is a worthy successor to the 1987 action fest and it’s entertaining sequel.
It gets going in rather speedy fashion. As soon as the 20th Century Fox logo has disappeared, then BAM! Adrian Brody as our grizzled anti-hero Royce is falling from thirty thousand feet, with only a few moments from regaining consciousness to hitting the floor in which he can open his malfunctioning parachute. Upon landing he meets with people that are equally confused and equally grizzled and all equally stereotyped (the filthy gringo, the death row convict, the Yakuza goon, the spunky heroine, the tribal warrior, the buff Ruski soldier…). Their mission: find out where they are and why. As it turns out, they’re very far away from home.
Despite everyone being, effectively, meat for the slaughter we spend enough time with the characters to feel like we know enough about them for them to at least be individuals rather than just fodder (which of course the majority are). The only problem is that, in spending so much time with these people, the film does lag by the half way point. There is the odd skirmish: an attack by some Predator dogs, their first encounter with the Predators proper, but not enough to stop the mind from wondering. Why if the Predator’s have bright green blood do the dogs have red blood? And why do most of the jungle scenes look like they’ve been filmed in the New Forest? I did get bored on more than one occasion, and it wasn’t helped by Lawrence Fishburn’s brief, needless and rather crap cameo as survivor turned loony.
It does pick up. Once Fishburn leads the team to his hideout the film gets much better. Much like the original, the second half rarely relents in its action (in fact the first one is mentioned, which produced a cheer from the back of the theatre). The beats are executed successfully on the whole, even during the early skirmishes, with the only misstep being the sword fight between the Predator and the Yakuza gangster (hint: for a sword fight it’s very slow). It is during the latter half of the movie that film redeems itself from being merely pedestrian to earning its Predator badge. We even get one unfortunate soul having his spinal chord ripped out with head still intact.
My only major beef, other than how slow the first half is, is the lack of any insight into the Predator world. Whilst it is hinted that the species has at least two rival clans that are very much at odds with each other (we do see some Predator on Predator action which I liked very much), there is literally nothing said and shown that we don’t already know. I would like to see the actual Predator home world in much more detail than the glimpse in the risible AvP: Requiem.
But I digress, for what is effectively a rather well made retread of the first film, sans Arnie, it does its job. What it lacks in new info on the titular beasties it makes up for in giving us what we crave from a Predator movie.
3/5
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