THE CRITIC-AL LIST
Reviews by Alan Jones
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Inception
Predators
The Twilight Saga:Eclipse
Toy Story 3
Hot Tub Time Machine
Iron Man 2
Repo Men
The Collector
Clash of the Titans
Shelter
How To Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
Shutter Island
Alice In Wonderland
The Crazies
Case 39
The Wolfman
Legion
The Lovely Bones
Black Death
Daybreakers
Avatar
Ninja Assassin
The Descent: Part 2
Amer
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Box
2012
Disney's A Christmas Carol
The Horseman
Solomon Kane
Pandorum
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
District 9
An Education
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra
Orphan
A Perfect Getaway
The Imaginarium Of
Doctor Parnassus
Up
Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince
The Taking of Pelham 123
Transformers
The Revenge Of The Fallen
Antichrist
Terminator Salvation
Last House On The Left
Inglorious Basterds
Angels & Demons
Adventureland
Star Trek
Crank: High Voltage
Coraline
Dragonball Evolution
Let The Right One In
Drag Me To Hell
Race to Witch Mountain
Knowing
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Not Quite Hollywood
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Martyrs
The Children
Surveillance
Watchmen
The Unborn
The International
Friday The 13th
Franklyn
Push
Punisher:War Zone
The Good The Bad And
The Weird
Hush
Underworld
The Rise OF The Lycans
My Bloody Valentine
Bolt
Slumdog Millionaire

Directed by Nimrod Antel. Starring Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins, Derek Mears. FAction, Horror, Thriller, USA, 107 min.

The ‘Adrien Brody: The Genre Years’ season continues with director Nimrod (VACANCY) Antal’s backs-to-basics reboot of the PREDATOR franchise, joyously overseen by fan boy producer Robert Rodriguez.

Truly Brody is much better here as Royce, the buff leader of the Earth’s worst bad guys transported to an alien hunting planet as prey, than he was in SPLICE, THE EXPERIMENT remake or, dare I say the dreaded name, GIALLO. Mercenary Royce along with Israeli sniper Alice Braga, drug gang enforcer Danny Trejo, killer convict Walton Goggins, Russian Special Forces Oleg Taktarov, African Death Squaddie Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Yakuza Louis Ozawa Changhien and disgraced physician Topher Grace wake up in parachute freefall to crash-land on a jungle planet where they are systematically eliminated by a new breed of hunter creature. Just so you are clear about it all, the overall concept is cold-blooded human predators vs. their intergalactic versions in a battle royale. The trouble is for Troublemaker Studios who shot this for Fox in Hawaii is there are few fresh tricks up Antal and RobRod’s collective sleeves in their serviceably solid sci-fi action thriller, or in the design of the now overly familiar invisibility-cloaked, dreadlocked creatures. With little visual originality on offer the initial confusion is extended amongst the multi-cultural scumbags trying to work out what’s exactly happened to them and why Topher Grace’s seemingly benign character is even on the B movie Team. Yet this extension nimbly conjures up a crackling aura of menace that is well maintained by Antal before the nasty, not too gory, close encounters begin. Tenuously linked to the 1987 Arnie classic (the plot is recounted as a memory by Braga when it’s clear she’s seen the alien monsters before), the hilarious highlight is the sudden appearance of Laurence Fishburne (from Antal’s ARMORED) as a crazed survivor from a previous prey party. His cameo is quite brief and to the nefarious point but boy does it liven things up when most needed. Other neat moments include a breed of spiky CGI hunting dogs used by the meaner hunter Predators (called Berserkers as per the production notes) to flush out their victims. There’s also a left-field serial killer twist to contend with before the inevitable Adam and Eve ending. Okay, PREDATORS is very much trap-them-and-kill-them business as usual. But the alien jungle settings look lovely, especially in the Yakuza sword fight, the acting is convincing enough and the action mayhem is well choreographed, particularly around the bone yard trophy site.  

Formula to the max it may be, it’s not a bad way to amiably pass 107 minutes of your time.

Alan Jones

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