After the films of the last few days, Predators has come as quite a welcome relief. Oh, I'm not about to start claiming it's the best film in the series or a triumph of 21st-century filmmaking, because it's not, but for what it is, it's entertaining enough - a clear love letter to the original 1987 Predator movie.
Several people, including an American mercenary called Royce and an IDF sniper called Isabelle, wake up to find themselves in freefall in an unfamiliar place. Their parachutes open at the last minute to ensure they hit the ground safely, and they come together one by one and discover that, with the exception of Edgar who says he is a doctor and death row inmate Stans, they are all members of infamous military groups or criminal gangs - Spetznaz, RUF, Mexican cartels and Yakuza included. Trying to work out where they are and who brought them to this place they try making their way out of the jungle they're in, only to discover that they're actually on an alien planet and being hunted. It turns out that, after years of various success and coming up against more formidable prey than they bargained for, the Predators have started abducting suitable prey from Earth and bringing them to this "game preserve" planet, where the Predators have the home advantage. We also discover that there are actually two species of Predator and that the two groups don't get on, to the point that they have one of the "classic" Yautja tied up in their camp to torture when they're bored. Royce and the others have to work together not only to defeat the "new" Predators hunting them but to also figure out a way off the planet...
First off, just to keep things as uncomplicated as possible and to keep with the naming convention I started in the AVP movies with referring to the Predators there as Yautja, 'm going to be referring to the new "Super Predators" in this movie as Hish-Qu-Ten (and just wait till September when we discover that I'll probably have been using the names the wrong way round or something).
So here's where the continuity gets a little bit complicated. Robert Rodriguez and Nimrod Antal have stated that Predators is a sequel only to the original 1987 film, and so disregards the 1990 sequel and the two AVP movies - which would also disregard the Alien movies from its canon as well. But there are several little nods to the Alien movies in the film, the most notable of which is that one of the Hish-Qu-Ten is wearing the lower jaw of a Xenomorph as part of his mask. Yes, stuff like this bugs me, because my actual OCD means I can't not see these things. However, in the grand scope of things, this is a minor continuity blip, and not one that ruins the film.
Predators is an ensemble movie, or as I like to call them, a spectacle movie. Several big names in the cast that may or may not be utilised to their fullest extent, lots of action scenes and only the barest of plot... and yes, I could be describing either this movie or the 1987 one, couldn't I? I said at the start of the review that Predators is clearly a love letter to that first film, and the level of devotion to the original subject matter shows. Even several of the characters have obvious parallels to the 1987 characters - Nikolai has a minigun just like Blain and Hanzo gets to face off against one of the Hish-Qu-Ten one-on-one in a clear callback to Billy's fate (and incidentally, that whole scene is my favourite of the entire film with its visual style reminding us of Samurai battles in feudal Japan, and I think Hanzo might be my favourite character in the film overall) and there are numerous little Easter Eggs throughout the film to remind us of moments from the original Predator.
On the other hand... The plot is paper-thin (although, again, the 1987 film was no intellectual powerhouse of a film either) and the movie does have to deal with the problem of having to juggle the fact that all of its characters are rather larger-than-life and could easily take over the film if not kept tightly under control - but then they also get very little characterisation. Hell, we only learn the names of four characters - Royce, Isabelle, Nikolai and Noland (and Stans in a deleted scene)- during the whole film. Everyone else has to wait till the credits to be named, or for people to watch the subtitles. Characters are just that disposable.
There's also the issue that a lot of the characters in the film are... less than pleasant, shall we say. Cuchillo is a Cartel enforcer who puts people in barrels and sets them on fire, Mombasa is a member of a death squad, and Stans was on death row for killing 38 people and probably raping a lot of them as well (again, only in the deleted scenes). And our protagonist Royce, who carries a gun my brother swears looks like a plastic toy but is actually an AA-12 fully automatic twelve-gauge shotgun, is quite psychopathic in his behaviour himself. Of course, all of this is to lend itself to the dual nature of the title - not only are we facing more than one Predator/Yish-Qu-Ten this time around, but each of the humans is a predator is his or her own right. Which also leads to the obvious plot point that is Edwin, the apparently innocent civilian who's somehow found himself on an alien planet surrounded by killers. The film seems to think itself clever in keeping his revelation until the end of the film, but anyone who's even slightly genre-savvy will see what's coming within moments of meeting him.
Predators will never win any awards (aside from two for the stunt work, which it received for the scene when everyone rolls off an 80-foot cliff and freefall into the water below), but it's still basic B-movie, action-sci-fi-horror fun. It's competently made and the characters hold the attention, and it's suitably bombastic and knows its source material. Which is good enough for me.
Comments