Adrien Brody and Alice Braga in 'Predators'. Courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Video.
Before getting into my review of Predators it should be be noted that it’s not a remake as some think. It’s actually a sequel to Predator (1987) and Predator 2 (1990) and ignores the events in Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Aliens vs Predator – Requiem (2007). That said, Predators works as a cheesy, B-grade action sci-fi film and, in my opinion, is better than all other renditions of the series.
The film opens with our protagonist Royce (Adrien Brody) waking up in free flight and landing in a mysterious jungle. He has no memory of how he got there and in his confused state heads out to look for an answer. He soon meets other random people who were also dropped from the sky with no recollection of how or why. Together they discover they are on another planet and are the prey in a game played by an alien species.
Although he’s not as memorable as Schwarzenegger was in the original, Brody does a great job anchoring Predators and delivers the right amount of tough guy shtick with the right amount of corniness. The surprise star, however, was Alice Braga in her portrayal of kick-ass military sniper Isabelle. As the only female in the movie I found her to be the best written character and Braga came across as the most bad-ass actor out of the bunch (even putting Danny Trejo to shame). Sadly, the performances of Laurence Fishburne and Topher Grace were terrible and I was rooting for them to be killed off very early on.
Serving as producer on Predators, Robert Rodriguez can likely take a good deal of credit for the success of the final product. The action scenes and overall vibe of the movie all pointed to his style. All the weak parts point to the contribution of director Nimród Antal. His last film, Armored
Predators is a special effects-driven movie that was shot digitally using state-of-the-art HD cameras and watching it on Blu-ray
Film *** / Blu-ray **** (out of 5 stars)
Rated 14A
Cast: Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Laurence Fishburne, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo
Directed by: Nimród Antal
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