Predators (2010)

When I read that Predators was going to be released in the summer of 2010, my mind swirled with nostalgia and returned to the year 1987, the release date for the first film in the franchise. I was completing my final driver’s ed course, and the last-minute bailout of another student left us with a gap in our schedule. After taking my turn learning the finer points of parallel parking and right-of-ways, I soon found myself in the darkened confines of a local theatre with a fellow classmate and my driving instructor. That would be my first exposure to the massive alien manhunters known as the Predators, as well as Dutch, Mac, Dillon, and even ‘Ol Painless.

My driving skills have improved since then. The franchise has not.

Predator 2 (1990) was a disappointing look at an alien loose in the middle of L.A., with a post-Lethal Weapon Danny Glover in hot pursuit. Then, after 14 years of dormancy, the series returned with a pair of films focusing on the lethal struggle between Predators and their acid-bleeding counterparts from the Alien franchise. All of these films made money, but none managed to surpass the suspense and well-muscled action laid out in the original.

Now comes Predators, a film directed by Nimrod Antal (Kontroll, Armored, and Vacancy) and co-produced by Robert Rodriguez. Meant as a direct sequel to the first two films, it places the characters back in the jungle, arms them to the teeth, and releases them like rats into an especially deadly maze. We’re invited to watch.

Adrien Brody plays Royce, an American mercenary who begins the story freefalling towards the surface of a planet. After nearly being killed on impact, he revives and encounters a number of fellow soldiers/killers. They are:

• Isabelle (Alice Braga) – A sniper for the Israeli Defense Force.
• Cuchillo (Danny Trejo) – Mexican enforcer for the brutal Los Zetas drug cartel.
• Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov) – Russian commando serving in the Second Chechen War.
• Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) – A member of a Sierra Leone death squad.
• Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien) – An assassin for the Yakuza.
• Stans (Walton Goggins) – A San Quentin inmate two days away from execution.
• Edwin (Topher Grace) – A seemingly normal physician.

As the group alternates between bonding and in-fighting, they slowly come to realize the horrible truth: they’ve been abducted, placed on an alien game preserve, and slated to be hunted down by the beings who give the film its title. In fact, these are a new race known as the Black Predators, a clan apparently engaged in a blood feud with the mandible-faced baddies we’re more familiar with.

One of the major contributors to the success of the first film was the tense score from composer Alan Silvestri. The main theme is still included, and replacement John Debney never strays far from his blueprint. All the Predator sound effects you know and love are present, and the film tries hard to pay homage to the original by including a soldier wielding a mini-gun (a la Blain), Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” played during the end credits, and an ill-advised solo stand against a Predator wielding nothing but a bladed weapon.

But despite all the nods to Predator, this film lacks the suspense generated by the first. Of course, there was no Internet in 1987, and a clever marketing campaign kept viewers in the dark about the appearance of the alien hunter. We never got a full look at him until his climactic showdown with Schwarzenegger. Now we know far more about the race thanks to video games, numerous comic books, and the world wide web. The introduction of the Black Predator is an attempt to bring something new to the table, but it’s appearance only differs slightly and fails to impress on any meaningful level. A few CGI beasts are also thrown into the mix, but they’re even less noteworthy.

The humans are much more interesting this time around, and director Antal lavishes them with close-ups designed to show every line of worry and regret. Adrien Brody added 25 pounds of muscle to his frame for the film, and he trudges through the jungle with a chip on his shoulder and gravel in his voice. While it’s an interesting departure for the Oscar-winning actor, his steady stream of me-against-dialogue does wear thin after a time.

The rest of the group lasts longer than expected, and every effort is made to develop them beyond mere cardboard cutouts. This proves most effective with Walton Goggins and Laurence Fishburne. Goggins plays a violent death row inmate with a naked tattoo of his sister and a simple dream of escaping captivity to “rape bitches.” Forced to brave the sweltering jungle with nothing more than a shiv, he gets the best lines of the film. Fishburne, meanwhile, puts in an appearance as Noland, an American soldier who’s survived “10 seasons” on the lethal game preserve. It’s a deranged, hammy performance that works perfectly within the confines of the film.

The Yakuza also get more love than expected. In most non-Japanese films, members of this criminal organization are usually the first to die. But in the case of Hanzo, the Japanese killer more than makes up for previous cinematic failures. Walking around barefoot–and with only three fingers on his right hand–he manages to pull of a feat previously unseen in the annals of Predator lore.

Those expecting wall-to-wall action will be disappointed, as Antal takes his sweet time setting things up. While this does result in greater characterization than usual, it unfortunately leads to a climactic series of one-on-one showdowns that are best described as jumbled. While it’s obvious from the beginning that Topher Grace’s doctor has some kind of secret, this reveal is shoehorned into the film’s last 20 minutes and further disrupts the flow of the narrative. And having a “classic” Predator present as nothing more than a plot device is never a good idea.

Despite a number of stumbles along the way, Predators does achieve its goal of being an entertaining mixture of action and science fiction. It won’t become a classic like the original, but, in a summer riddled with god-awful entries such as Killers and Jonah Hex, it’s got just enough firepower to survive.