Full Review    Predators (2010)

 

The film occurs in present day and has one of the most interesting openings I have seen. There is nothing better than having both the audience and the characters of the film, confused as to what is happening. The opening shot of the film is Adrian Brody's character falling from the sky. He has no idea why he is falling but he's falling fast and approaching the ground. He hits his parachute and still experiences and extremely violent landing. As he stands up, he realizes that others are falling out of the sky with him. After all is said and done, there are eight strangers stranded in this mysterious jungle. They have no clue how they got there and they have no idea where they are. All eight of these people have something in common though; they are predators themselves, i.e. convicts, killers, ex-military, Yakuza, etc. Only one of them, played by Topher Grace, seems to have been mistakenly placed there considering he is a doctor and seems like an all around great guy. Without giving away too many spoilers, let's just say that all eight of these strangers have landed on a mysterious animal planet containing the Alien Predators. Now, the game has begun where they will fight for their lives.

 

Predators stars Adrian Brody (The Pianist, King Kong), Alice Braga (I Am Legend), Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, King of New York), Topher Grace ("That 70's Show"), Walton Goggins ("Justified"), Oleg Taktarov, Danny Trejo (Machete, Desperado), Louis Ozawa Changchien ("Law and Order", "Heroes and Villians") and Mahershalalhashbaz Ali (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

 

I guess the big question everyone wants answered is whether or not this installment of the series is better than the original. The short answer is no but it is the best film involving the predators since then, i.e. Predator 2, Alien Vs. Predator, Alien Vs. Predators: Requiem. What's great about this movie is that you can tell a huge fan of the first film made it. He pays perfect homage to that movie yet still creates his own environment with new predators. I was reading that Nimrod wanted these predators to be relentless and not helpful to the humans like we have seen in the "Alien vs. Predator" films. They are supposed to be brutal beings and that's exactly what we get in this film. There are two types of "Predators" in this film, the original and a new, sharper breed. 

 

For you "Predator" fans out there, this film is filled with bad-ass action and violence. Nimrod Antal gave the fans exactly what they wanted; a hard R-Rated film. There are decapitations, people exploding and more. He went all out with the violence and I am not saying that necessarily makes a good film but it makes for a fun "Predator" movie. One of the biggest issues with Alien Vs. Predator was the PG-13 rating and one of the biggest issues with the sequel was how dark the film was. Even though the movie was R-Rated, you could not see anything because everything was filmed at night and very quickly edited together.

 

Adrian Brody nails it as the lead character. He gained twenty-five pounds of muscle for the role and it shows. Now, does he look like Arnold Schwarzenegger; no chance. Though, he does pull of a great role as a mysterious bad-ass who just wants to get the hell out of there. Even though he is only on screen for roughly fifteen minutes, Laurence Fishburne plays a great role as a whacked-out guy whose been on the planet for many years. There is also a very strong performance from Alice Braga, who brings a great bad-ass role to the table as one of the female led characters in the movie. 

 

Listen, this movie was made for fans of science-fiction and action. On my scale, this is definitely worth seeing in theatres mainly because of the action and performances. There are even hints of emotional connections as the back-stories of these eight men unravel. For fans, this movie is a 4 BDK rating out of 5. It will definitely please you. Now, I can totally see someone walking into this film who completely hates on science fiction and over-the-top bloody action movies and saying that it was awful. You have to judge this film based on the audience it is being geared towards and for them, including myself, it is one hell of a great time. 

 

 

Source: [ bdkreviews ]