Friday, July 9, 2010

Predators delivers on everything promised

Forget those crap Alien vs Predator movies. Predators gets back on track of the first two Predator movies. Now while nothing will ever touch Schwarzenegger's epic flick from 1987, Predators is easily the second best film in the series. It expands on the original storyline and has the Predators hunting humans on the alien's world, which makes for a nice change of pace. Because if the creators decided to do another single Predator hunting a group of soldiers on Earth, then this would have been nothing more than a remake of Arnie's film. So it makes a lot of sense to do the film this way, even if some fans don't particularly care for this set-up. I do and it works. It wastes little time too as it opens with lead Adrian Brody who plays mercenary Royce waking up in free-fall trying to open up his parachute. He lands on the alien planet along with 7 other humans including Alice Braga as a Special OPS sharpshooter who holds her own with the guys as she is the only female present. The other participants include a convicted killer, a Yakuza member, a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, a tribal warlord, a Russian soldier, and a seemingly out of place doctor (played by Topher Grace). After the initial mistrust issues between everyone, they figure out they are on an alien planet and are being hunted. The first major action scene has the Predators (there are three of them) unleashing their hounds to flush out our heroes who unload everything they got with their specialised weapons. It was sporting of the Predators to snatch up these guys and bring them here with their weapons in tow. Anyway, it's an awesome scene as they take down several of the hounds. Later on they finally meet their first Predator and it's another kick ass scene that lets loose with some major onscreen firepower. After that scene, things settle down for a bit and Laurence Fishburne pops up as a soldier who has survived being hunted for 7 to 10 years. Even his character doesn't know how long he has been here as he is prone to talking to himself and creeping everyone out. More action follows as our heroes are now running low on ammo and being picked off one by one. Which sets the stage for an exciting finale that pays homage to the original Predator film's climax. I enjoyed this film quite a bit and I was impressed with Adrian Brody's performance as Royce. While he may be quite slender, he handles the action scenes very well. And played the tough guy role perfectly. But I was even more impressed with Alice Braga's character as she provided the trait of compassion for her fallen comrades as well as kicking some ass. Also the Yakuza guy was bad ass. He has a memorable sword fight scene with one of the predators which was just cool as hell. It was also a plus to have the original music score being played once again to provide even more familiarity. Predators is the action film that will please most fans and have you anxiously awaiting the next film.
B

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