Let me start first by saying that Predators is the best movie starring the eponymous hunts-aliens since Predator 2. Both regrettable AvP movies should hereby be erased from your memory like a bad overnight drunk.
That said, Predators feels more like a sequel to the original than Predator 2, or even a re-envisioning of the film that starred two future governors (forgot about Jesse “I ain’t got time to bleed” Ventura didn’t ya?). Standing in for the special ops team in Guatemala is a multi-racial cadre of killers air-dropped into an unknown jungle without any knowledge of how or why. The group, a 13-year-old’s laundry list of badass stereotypes: the Yakuza hitman, the Mexican drug cartel (an underused Danny Trejo), the Russian Spetsnaz agent, the Israeli sniper (the girl), the death-row psycho, the Mombasan revolutionary, and a seemingly out of place doctor (Grace), are reluctantly led by Adrien Brody’s cliche spouting mercenary. It’s like Con Air in space!
It’s a pleasant surprise to see how director Nimrod Antal keeps things interesting. The predator savvy audience member presumably knows why these people were picked, what they were picked for, and what the jungle really is, yet Antal is in no rush to jump straight into the action. Instead, the film builds tension (despite/because of its familiar trappings) by letting these caricatures of characters wander the woods investigating their situation. Each small discovery clues these world-weary warriors in to their dire situation. When our bad-guy brigade finally encounters the dreaded witch-finger face, it’s not as would be expected, and what they later learn reveals new elements of the predator’s (human) hunter and (spine) gatherer culture.
Of course, this will mostly only appeal to sci-fi fans and action junkies. As far as plot and characters go, it’s pretty rote, albeit rote done right. The film overcomes it’s genre pitfalls by embracing them. As the Twilight Saga is to middle-aged moms, this R-rated silly science fiction sh*t is childish escapism for guys. Why else, other than sheer awesomeness, would there be a samurai sword in this movie? And why should a film like Predators try to be anything more?
