Adrien Brody is perhaps the most unlikely successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger one is liable to imagine. Brody is best known for offbeat and intelligent indie fare, such as Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited or Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, so it is somewhat of a surprise to see his name on the cast list in this latest installment in the Predator series. Less surprising, though no less welcome is Robert Rodriguez’s role as producer. Rodriguez’s name is something of an indicator of quality; generally, he makes good, fun films, ideal for Saturday night viewing and Predators is no exception.
Brody plays a tough as nails mercenary who, in the very first scene, awakes in mid-air while plummeting from the sky towards a dense jungle. Make no mistake: this film starts in high gear and throws the audience in at the deep end along with its protagonist. Brody quickly learns he is not alone and soon finds himself leading a bunch of expert killers through the foreign forest in an attempt to find out what the hell has happened to them.
They have, of course, been captured and turned loose by the Predators, who are now hunting them for sport. The game are Brody’s aforementioned mercenary, Alice Braga’s sniper, the excellently named Walton Goggin’s death row inmate, Oleg Taktarov’s Spetznaz soldier, Danny Trejo’s Mexican cartel enforcer, Louis Ozawa Changchien’s Yakuza gangster, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali’s Sierra Leone death squad member and Topher Grace’s out-of-place doctor. Laurence Fishburne turns up as a crazed survivor of previous hunts, looking surprisingly bloated for someone who has spent several years scavenging. Who will survive and what will be left of them?
Predators boasts an excellent sense of pacing and director Nimród Antal handles breakneck chases, unbearably tense hide and seek scenes and numerous fight sequences with ease. Key to the film’s success is that the plot has been kept stripped down and simple, allowing for a visceral experience. The cast are all pretty strong and likable, though Braga is clumsily hampered with having to be empathetic and emotional because she, of course, is the woman.
I enjoyed the use of location, which looked superficially earthly but with an alien twist. The reveal that the group are not, in fact, on earth is especially good. Whilst I enjoyed the back-to-basics approach, I was a little disappointed that I found myself simply guessing (almost entirely correctly) who was going to die and in what order rather early on, though the film hardly promises intellectual acrobatics. What you get is exactly what it says on the tin: fun, exciting action decently made by a decent cast and crew with nary a mention of the godawful AVP series. Though perhaps unlikely to leave a real lasting impression, Predators is very good summer entertainment.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment