Ah the 80s, such a fun era for film, particularly action films. The decade brought us: Stallone’s Rambo series, Willis as John Maclane in the Die Hard’s, the rise of Jean-Claude van Damme and the Governator himself with gems such as Commando, The Terminator and my personal favorite, Predator (1987). So going into Robert Rodriguez’s Predators (2010), my only hope was for it to be a fun film with some good action and effects. Boy, did it deliver.
The film opens with the main character, Royce (Adrian Brody), plummeting to the ground desperately trying to open his parachute. As he lands he quickly discovers he is not alone and after some mishaps the band of 8 characters we are presented with find out their common ground. Murder. In every person’s case that is their specialty, whether it be a member of a cartel, mercenary, black ops soldier or a convict on death row. They soon realize that they are being hunted in order for their adversaries to hone their own skills and, as a result, decide it is best to stick together. We find out that Rodriguez adds to the Predator’s lore by creating two types of predators that are apparently at odds with each other which comes into play in the latter part of the film. One by one, members of the cast are picked off in a variety of ways until we are brought to the final fight. I won’t spoil who is left at the end to participate in said climax, but anyone who watched a trailer or has a general knowledge of movies can tell who will be left standing as the credits roll.
The thing that makes this film work is the diversity of all the characters and how much the viewer will invest in all of them. I’m not saying they are saints because they are far from it, but strong performances make you actually care when they are dispatched. When i found out Adrian Brody was being cast as the lead i was a little leary simply because i was comparing him to Schwarzenegger, but that ended up being a mistake as he was phenomenal. Alice Braga as Isabelle was also solid as Brody’s female co-star serving as a nice counter to his macho, loner portrayal as the lead. Walton Goggins plays Stans and eerily does well as a death row inmate. My personal favorite was Oleg Taktarov as Nikolai, the soldier who just wants to survive this ordeal so he can get back home to his family. We are even treated to an off the wall performance from Morpheus himself, Laurence Fishburne, as a surviving member of a former Predator hunt from a long time ago. Lous Ozawa Changchien plays Hanzo, a member of the Yakuza, and even though his speaking parts are few and far between he ends up pretty bad ass. The only downside to the characters was Topher Grace as the doctor caught up in all of this. I may be unfairly biased here but after his debacle as Venom in Spiderman 3 I was just tired of his whiny and helpless self.
I also want to touch on the music and special effects. Rodriguez uses a lot of the original music from the original Predator film and that just took me back and even though the movie seems to be set in present day it felt like an 80s film. As for the effects, they were top notch. We had explosions, decapitations, alien lifeforms etc. The CGI never seemed over the top and there was the right amount of blood when it was needed. The 20+ year technology upgrade was a breath of fresh air. No disrespect to the original of course.
All in all, Predators was a fun ride with some nice kills, great characters and fresh, inventive direction to this series. Rodriguez does an excellent job in capturing good old 1980s fun and only thing keeping me from giving this a perfect score is that it didn’t have Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse “The Body” Ventura and the 80s cheesy one-liners.