I’ve been looking forward to Predators for a long time. I love Predator and I love Robert Rodriguez. It should have been a match made in heaven but I can’t help but feel disappointed. There were a lot of good ideas and a lot of it was executed well but a few key flaws really held it back and kept it average instead of awesome.

The story is super straight forward. An assortment of eight soldiers, thugs and killers are plucked out of their lives and wake up free-falling over a jungle. They have no idea where they are or how they got there but they discover in fairly short order that they are no longer on earth and the planet they are on serves as a game preserve for the alien hunters we saw in the first film. This is not a reboot but a sequel and makes direct reference to the first film. The story is a Ten Little Indians set up and it works well enough for what it is.

Robert Rodriguez wrote this after the original movie as a direct sequel featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch as a main character. It didn’t pan out back then but it has been brushed off and rewritten to exclude the Governor of California. Unfortunately for the film he was replaced with Adrien Brody.

Brody apparently lobbied hard for the role and Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal were skeptical. I am not sure how he won them over but I can’t imagine it was his growly voice and how he handled a weapon. I think it was probably just the fact that he was an Oscar winner and that is where the conversation stopped. I wish the conversation would have then continued  toward Brody going to some kind of boot camp or training to make him look and act like a soldier but it seems like it just went toward what sort of scarf he was going to wear around his neck and how to talk like some kind of villain from the golden age of radio. Brody’s failure really hurts the picture because when your main heavy is super soft it hurts everything else. I am pretty sure that when Brody takes off his shirt and cakes himself with mud to take on the Predator people weren’t meant to laugh but that is what they did.

This lack of credibility extends to the other players as well as once you can’t take Brody’s Royce seriously the rest of them looked pretty weak. Given that the movie is trying to call back the scares and tension of the first one this is really big problem. Part of what worked about the first movie is that you have these big scary guys who kick all kinds of ass and aren’t scared of anything. Then they start getting picked off and they do get scared. The audience is then off balance because holy shit if THESE guys are scared this must be serious. And the characters are scared but they are also pissed and try to fight back and you have this great confrontation. Because the characters here are not as believable as badasses, it doesn’t work as well when they get scared and overcome the fear to take a stand. Actually, now that I think about it, Brody never really gets scared and I think it is mostly because it is hard to be too scared when you have a mouth full of scenery.

Since it is hard to really engage in what is going on it is hard to give much of a shit and the beats that are supposed to be filled with tension and release fall flat. Obviously this is another big problem when the whole point is to go for suspense. So the movie really fails to capture the spirit of the first one right off the bat and what we are left with is just another sci-fi action movie. The bright side of that is as a sci-fi action movie with special effects and action set ups it works pretty well.

Pretty much everything from a technical standpoint is good. The fights are generally well choreographed and executed and the shaky camera doesn’t distract too much or really muddle what is going on.  The music cues are good and never distract or take away from the action and the use of the tribal drums from the first movie is a nice touch. The special effects are very effective and are just right. They didn’t over do anything nor did they try to float something obviously substandard. It was also nice that they kept with the guys in suits for the Predators because it would have been really lame had they gone with CG.

The performances aside from Brody are kind of a mixed bag. Danny Trejo basically plays Danny Trejo so there is no real surprise there. Mahershalalhashbaz Ali isn’t bad really but he does nothing to justify all those goddamn letters in his name as Mombasa. Lawrence Fishburn as Nolan turns in a nice batshit crazy performance but for a dude that has been there for 10 years he has really packed on the pounds. I am not sure what surviving a decade on an alien world filled with badass motherfuckers who want nothing else but to kill you and rip your skull and spine out but I can’t imagine it involves a lot of trips to McDonald’s. I am not svelte myself but I think if I was going to take on this role I would hit the elliptical machine a bit more. Russian Bear Oleg Taktarov is one of the few members of the cast who looks like he could take on the predators size-wise but his face looks so scrunched and round the whole time it is sort of like watching Baby Huey carry around a mini-gun.

Some actors really stood out though. To my surprise, Topher Grace’s Edwin turned out to be my favorite character followed by the always awesome Walton Goggins as death row inmate Stans. Alice Braga was very compelling as sniper Isabelle and I could actually buy her being someone with whom you should not fuck.Louis Ozawa Changchien is awesome as Hanzo the Yakuza gangster who has the balls to bring a sword to a laser and cloaking device fight.

Conclusion [6.8 out of 10]

As negative as all this sounds, I didn’t hate Predators. When it worked it worked well but when it stumbled it came up with a broken knee.  I liked the concept and a good deal of the execution but Brody failing to pull of a convincing hardman really hurt. If you have been chomping at the bit for a new Predator movie that doesn’t completely suck then this might be your movie. It has some pretty big flaws but it has enough good in it to warrant an early bird show, a screening at a second run theater or a Netflix rental. It is far and away better than the Alien VS Predator movies but I still prefer Predator 2 if only because I buy Danny Glover as a badass way more than Adrien Brody.