Written by: Alex Litvak & Michael Finch
Starring: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Laurence Fishburne
Rating: [3/5]
Even when reaching the very top of a profession, practice and staying sharp remains paramount to maintaining one’s place. Something humans should remember but even killer alien monsters recognize the importance, which sets off the plot of the entertaining Predators. A film reshaping a formula that worked well before and delivers a good result once again with some intriguing characters thrown in.
Suddenly awoken in a strange forest, Royce (Adrien Brody) sees he’s not along with various individuals dropped in this place with him. Confused about their presence here, they quickly learn someone or something seems to be tracking them to hunt them down allowing them to guess they have been brought to a planet to serve as the prey to alien monsters using them as game to sharpen their hunting skills.
As the animal kingdom has displayed through the machinations of nature, most animals have something they hunt as prey for sustenance, which means they also serve as the prey for another predator creating this circle of life. Humans have pretty much segregated themselves from the whole cycle, but the Predator aliens arrive time and time again to remind everyone humans can stills serve as prey for something and with these characters brought to this foreign planet for this very purpose, it puts these characters in a precarious circumstance making for quite the entertaining story.
Similarly to the first feature, Predators gathers a group of individuals who can more than hold their own in the human world, which makes them the perfect target for these alien monsters to practice their hunting skills. From a Special Forces operative to a Yakuza agent, these individuals represent predators in their own world in one way or another. Now they serve as the prey in this horrendous game, which certainly puts things into perspective for how we treat other animals in our pursuit of some thrill. These characters have this fear but realize they must use the very skills qualifying them as worthy specimen to prey upon and use it to their advantage making for several exhilarating action sequences.
Featuring quite a diversity in skills, this film allows each of them to have their moment in the spotlight demonstrating what makes them so fierce. Many of them do succumb to the Predators, but some certainly go down swinging in their efforts to survive. Some tactics succeed more than others in order to leave a mark on these horrible alien creatures, thus showing the adaptability of these skills. The test these Predators set for themselves really shows a level of integrity when you think about it as they allow these individuals to utilize their weapons. Not making it a fair fight defeats the entire purpose making me respect their commitment to trying to improve their hunting ability.
As much as these individuals need to survive, they’ve reached where they are in life and on this planet because of their ability to kill people, which inevitably sows distrust amongst the team. From various backgrounds and all possessing the ability to permanently shut someone’s eyes; part of the process of this story allows them to learn more about each other. Not to confuse this with actual characterization for them but we learn what makes them tick with the added wrinkle of knowing not everyone can certainly be trusted completely. To do otherwise does not align with these characters and their nature allowing for them to doubt each other in moments, but not too often because they have killer aliens trying to take them out. The camaraderie that existed for the characters in the original Predator does not exist here, which makes the interactions in this feature a different experience.
Quite the enjoyable and serviceable feature, Predators does not reinvent the wheel when it comes to a movie about these alien monsters but puts on a nice skin and gives us a slightly different experience. This feature brings a group of dangerous killers together needing to use their skills and collaboration in order to survive the horrors of this planet in the hopes for survival. Providing just enough new stuff to keep things engaging and some deliriously fun action sequences, this film does well in carrying the torch of what this franchise can provide in entertainment value.
Films with Josh 