Film Review - Predators

I didn't enjoy this the first time I watched this, but as I'd watched the first two films today I thought I'd complete the set. Compared to the first two films it's rubbish, as a film in its own right it's ok (if you squint and have a little snooze mid way through).

We start the film falling from the sky, this time we're not on Earth, prize candidates for the hunt are taken from their home worlds and dropped onto this world to be hunted. A group of humans, all expert killers (except one, a doctor who stands out a bit) from around the world find themselves in the same predicament. Luckily for them they get to keep their weapons which come in handy quite quickly.

The film has an annoying trait of taking scenes from the first film and recreating them with the new cast, this isn't a re-shoot of the first film though, it just takes a few snatches here and there. The biggest issue for me was the group, there's a mix of characters there, but I didn't like any of them. In the previous films you rooted for the team being hunted, but there's nothing sympathetic here. They were handy in a fight, but had no other redeeming feature and more importantly there's no real chemistry between them.

It also has some very silly parts (I know that might seem an odd thing to say about a film about alien hunters), the sword fight, the recluse and the big reveal, none of them added anything of use, or even fun to the film.

For me the other problem was what it did with the Predators, I'm happy that there's different factions, but why do the bad ones look so ridiculous compared to the original. Watching two predators fight should also have been more awesome than what was shown here.

It does manage on the balance to be moderately entertaining, but only by the skin of its teeth. And in fairness it's gets a harder time than usual from me because it is so poor compared to the previous films, but you would be better served by watching them.

Predators, a bold new chapter in the Predator universe, shot under the creative auspices of Robert Rodriguez, stars Adrien Brody as Royce, a mercenary who reluctantly leads a group of elite warriors who come to realize they’ve been brought together on an alien planet… as prey. With the notable exception of a disgraced physician, they are all cold-blooded killers--mercenaries, Yakuza, convicts, death squad members--human “predators” that are now being systemically hunted and eliminated by a new breed of alien Predators in the ultimate battle of survival of kill, or be killed.

Predators is available from Amazon (it's the poor cousin of the trilogy)