PREDATORS review: who forgot to invite Arnold to the party?

PREDATORS review: who forgot to invite Arnold to the party?

Jul 08

Predators is a movie about a diverse bunch of assholes (one of them is even a woman – how inclusive!) getting their butts kicked by giant dreadlocked lizard men from space. It comes with Oscar-worthy pedigree in tow – in the form of Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishburne – and was produced under the auspices of cult hero / filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. So is it any good?

The short answer is “yes.” The long answer is “mostly, yes, but …” You see, for everything Predators does right in the first act, it does something wrong in the third act.

The opening is strong: relative newcomer Nimrod Antal has crafted some genuinely interesting character beats with which to introduce his diverse cast of bullies. Each actor brings something unique to their role, and the simple set-up allows for lots of potential wiggle-room later in the film.

The performances are all — miraculously for this type of film – passable at least, and great at best. Adrien Brody stands out, of course, but Laurence Fishburne’s Apocalypse Now-informed performance as a bloke who’s been on the wrong planet for too long is refreshingly fun to watch.

Topher Grace fares pretty well as the conspicuously clean doctor character, Danny Trejo can growl and dual-wield machine guns with the best of them, and Alice Braga understands how to tilt her head to get her hair to fall just so – the cast is well up to the challenge of breathing life into the characters, and this goes a long way towards making Predators fun.

Antal wisely opted to follow in the footsteps of the original, Arnie-fueled Predator, and holds back on the big monster reveal until just the right moment. He also knows exactly when to inject character moments and sci-fi ideas to best effect – some of the third act material in particular gave me pause for thought and cause for reflection, something I wasn’t expecting from such an action-oriented outing.

The joy of watching a movie like this comes in constantly wondering “what next?” Antal plays with this well (for the most part), delivering tense moments and climactic throwdowns with skill and style; there’s one match-up in particular, towards the end, that left my jaw on the floor, but I won’t spoil it for you here.

The film isn’t all good news, though. As is standard for digital photography these days, the image is stylishly desaturated, and therefore hard on the eyes. One of the best things about Predator (singular) was that the first two acts took place in broad daylight. The alien seemed so much more menacing because it didn’t hide in the shadows – it hid in plain sight. Predators (plural) takes place during some never-ending twilight shade, and this undercuts some of the tension (and is, of course, visually bland to boot).

The film’s focus on characters, while initially a good thing, becomes a bad thing when Predators falls off the rails somewhere in the second act. Characters whose motivations were solid and relatable suddenly do strange things for no good reason other than to provide a more desirable ending; I won’t say more for fear of spoilers, but I wish the characters had stayed true to themselves through to the end, rather than bending over backwards for the sake of expediency.

The other main problem with the film is the ending. Several different plot threads and ideas become entangled for the finale, but none of them is dealt with correctly. Aside from the characters’ motivations suddenly changing at the drop of a hat, some of the plot devices arbitrarily introduced early in the piece become very important very quickly – but don’t make a lick of sense. Again, I won’t spoil it, but you’ll know what I mean when you see it and go “huh?”

The best things about Predators for me were the solid first act, the focus on character, and the sci-fi ideas hinted at throughout the film. Some of the alien design work is great; a throwaway shot of a hominid skull really added to the Predators’ menace (they’ve been doing this hunting thing for millennia); and the film’s reliance on 80s-style stunts and physical effects added significantly to the film’s credibility.

On the flipside, the third act is a wreck, the movie runs about 20 minutes too long, and some of the characters don’t quite get what they deserve. A lot of the early tension is squandered in the dead-end finale, and (fun though it was) the middle-act Laurence Fishburne diversion could probably be cut completely and the film wouldn’t suffer for it.

Nevertheless, for a big dumb action flick, Predators isn’t half bad. Propelled by Nimrod Antal’s surprisingly strong direction and Adrien Brody’s thoroughly credible performance, with just the right amounts of humanity and conjecture, it’s a solid, if not amazing, time at the movies — even without Arnie or a choppah to which he must get.