Predators

After the underwhelming “Alien vs. Predator” franchise, it didn’t look like there was a need to revive either franchise. Apparently the Robert Rodriguez 2010 produced “Predators” shows there’s still something left in the series thanks to some powerful and explosive action.

A group of different soldiers are put on an island with no memory of how they saw themselves landing.

The mercenary (Adrien Brody) unwillingly finds himself leading this team consisted of an Israeli soldier (Alice Braga), a Russian soldier (Oleg Taktarov), a death row prisoner (Walton Goggins), a Sierra Leona private army fighter (Mahershala Ali), a Mexican drug lord (Danny Trejo), a Yakuza member (Louis Ozawa Changchien) and a doctor (Topher Grace).

Not long after they get their weapons and come up with a plan for leaving the island, the group sees they are hunted by a group of Predators looking to be their victims.

Jeffrey Lyles noted in his review, “Director Nimród Antal, who previously handled the horror/thriller Vacancy, takes a similar approach and follows the structure of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film with the Predators taking out the soldiers one by one.”

Lyles continued, “First-time screenwriters Alex Litvak and Michael Finch make a slight misstep in their setup as they make the characters a little too interesting and not the standard action movie fodder archetypes that you don’t care once they start getting killed. Instead, the film is written as a What If? episode of Lost where Jack and company learn that aliens are on the island in addition to polar bears.”

The top-notch soldier method is plotting and could be an interesting action movie by itself without inserting any Predators. The biggest surprise is that Brody can play a realistic tough-guy.

With his thin build and scrawny face, Body doesn’t have that obvious leading man in the typical look of an action movie, but he sincerely proves worthy of this mission. Lyles mentioned, “You don’t get the sense that he’s “pretending to be a tough guy” and he instantly makes you accept him as a hard-edge mercenary.”

Though he was seen a lot in the film’s trailers, Laurence Fishburne has a fun, but overall too short cameo as Noland, a long-time survivor, of the Predator problem. Lyles said, “Sharp-eyed viewers will notice a few shot-outs to the Predators’ alien sparring partners throughout the film.”

The film’s setting looks great helped from principal filming done in Hawaii and though some of the special effects are a little weak and don’t have enough detail – stressing the film’s $40 million budget – Antal looked to smartly spend much of his supplies filming the action scenes, which are well done and clearly shot. Antal doesn’t get too visual over-editing and cutting the fights and the delectably basic method.

“Predators” doesn’t target for anything more than being a fun sci-fi and it really wins in that regard.

Unlike the last two movies in the franchise where the people were dealing with one Predator, this one has people go up against many Predators. I feel as though Robert Rodriguez was borrowing a page from James Cameron’s “Aliens” when he conceived this film. If you want a film that feels like it’s in the same vein as “Predator,” this film might give you that. You should still see it because, surprisingly, it’s a good movie. Especially with Adrien Brody saying Schwarzenegger’s line, “Come on, kill me. I’m here! Come on, do it now!” Although it’s not as well said as before, it’s still nice to hear that line.

Well everyone, there wasn’t another Predator movie for eight years, but before we get to that, I’m going back to the Alien franchise to talk about a couple of movies that take place in another universe. If you want to know what I thought about it, wait until next Monday for the next installment of this year’s “Halloween Month.”