Movie Review – Predators

Imagine waking up to the deafening sound of air rushing past your body. You have no idea where the sod you are, you’re alone, falling, probably about to die. You’re in freefall. You panic. The ground is about 10’000 feet beneath you but approaching fast, you struggle to find your parachute but can’t get a grip of the rip chord. The air twists you and you’re spinning out of control towards a messy death, as the trees spring up towards you, you manage to open your chute just enough to slow you down as you slam through the jungle canopy and hit the ground. Then the title PREDATORS fills the screen.

It was one of the coolest intro’s to a movie I’ve seen in a while, and luckily the film managed to keep up that tense action throughout. This is no AvP monstrosity. The Predator has found his way back to a good place in movie awesomeness. This time he brought a few friends, too. Adrien Brody and co are stranded in the jungle, and are being stalked by multiple alien hunters – the plot is simple and the action is brutal: just the way a Predator film should be.

I should mention the fact that I’ve never seen Predator 2, but I can tell you that there are loads of fun references to the Arnie classic. The haunting musical score instantly brought back fond memories of the original team trekking through the jungle, unaware of the danger around them. The first section of the film builds the tension nicely, as the squad of seemingly random mercenaries, soldiers and misfits team up and try to work out what the hell is going on, also initially unaware of what’s hunting them. It doesn’t take long for them to find out.

In the hope of not being too spoilery, the ‘original’ Predator is not the only monster you’re gonna see in this film, but they do dominate it. The new creatures were excellently designed, and the special effects were well up to the standard you’d expect from a summer action movie. One particular scene involving the characters being hurled down a steep hill looked brutally convincing in the way it was shot, and I found myself wincing at every thud.

Watch these guys get picked off one by one...

The characters were all decent enough, and it was very peculiar watching Adrien Brody in a lead action role, but he managed it very well. His character comes off as the slightly stereotypical hard-man-with-a-past but he’s the ideal human to face off against the predators. He immediately tries to understand his enemy, and uses his brain to figure out the best way of dealing with them. Theres some good banter between the cast as they work together (sometimes grudgingly) to try to overcome the truly terrifying position they’ve found themselves in, and the entire segment with Lawrence Fishburne I found to be hilarious and cheesey in all the right ways.

I could easily go into more detail about certain scenes but I feel if you’re a fan of the Predator films, you’re going to see this at some point anyway, and I won’t ruin them for you here. The whole thing builds to a climactic finale which I found totally satisfying, and there was even room for a certain iconic song to kick in as the credits rolled. If you love Predator, go see this film – its a worthy sequel and a highly entertaining summer action thriller.