Sunday, November 28, 2010

Predators


Imagine walking around in a thick jungle full of heat, dampness and mortal danger, minding your own business, when suddenly you find yourself running from a huge dog equipped with long bony spikes protruding from its face and back. That dog wants to eat you. What do you do?

What DO you do?

You call Arnold, because He is your only hope.

Watching Predators will generate the feeling you now have in your gut.

The original still stands today as one of the best science fiction movies ever made, and one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best works, right up there with Conan the Barbarian, Terminator 2 and True Lies (I omit Total Recall because it did not stand the test of time like the above four).

Predators is a sequel/remake/reboot type of film that, although not bad at all, goes the safe way and keeps the themes of the original while changing the characters just a little bit. It takes place on another planet, but a jungle is a jungle so who cares?

The themes are survival in the face of impossible odds (just like every American film made in the last 100 years), teamwork, mystery, guns and violence. Please feel free to comment if you can find more. I think like I’m stretching this already though.

The team of usual suspects (the quiet, super awesome loner, the heavy weapons guy, the useless civilian, the crazy mental guy, the badass leader, the pretty girl, etc) must face three of the Nameless Aliens we have come to know and love. This time around however, the humans are not Marines or police officers but scum, killers, rapists, assassins, themselves predators and chosen by the Nameless Aliens as game for the hunt.

Very little is known about the characters on screen. We do not have much background, aside from their daily job and some of them have family. All we know is that they are all killers, except for Topher Grace’s character who is a doctor. In fact, the last words of the movie are from the two main characters who finally reveal their name to us. I suppose this is so that we don’t identify with murderers, god forbid we should go home, get our shotgun out of the closet and begin pumping lead into strangers…

That being said, the absence of identifiable characters doesn’t really hurt the film. This picture is about big guns, gore and special effects, not much more, and on this level it succeeds very well. There are some clever strategies used to survive, mostly from Adrian Brody’s character, and a few twists, although predictable, bring some welcome spice to the story.

For those who enjoyed the original, this is a step down, except for the visuals and acting. But it fills a whole for the lovers of violent science fiction films.

7/10