FILM REVIEW

Predators

DIRECTED BY: Nimrod Antal
STARRING: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Laurence Fishburne
CERT: 15A

OVER the past several years – and the summers in particular – we’ve become more familiar than ever before with Hollywood’s chronic regurgitation problem. Celluloid reflux, you could call it. Motion picture heartburn – though in this case, it is the brain that is chiefly affected. Usually it is the collective brain of the audience that bears the brunt of the damage.
Basically, for want of a bit of original thought, the studios have been burping up gallons of cover versions of their own biggest hits. Sequels, we call them. Sequel – not to be confused with Segal, meaning “large lump of bad acting” – comes from the Latin word seegullibilicus, meaning “watch these eejits pay lots of cash to see more of this rubbish”.
Sometimes if they’re having a really bad day, they will spew up a special kind of sequel called a prequel.
This is a reverse sequel, which has all the ingredients of the original movie and its first four sequels, except it tells you how the hero made it to the original movie in the first place and why he’s special enough to have four sequels, not counting the prequel sequel.
The prequel can also be called a genesis story, if your name is Batman, though viewers should be aware that superhero genesis stories are not set in the Garden of Eden and at no point does a man called Noah build a ship in the desert. However, some of these films will include characters called Abraham or Isaac, wise older gentlemen who are usually blind and played by Morgan Freeman or Laurence Fishburne. Often they are very good at karate.
Films which don’t fall directly into the sequel or prequel category but which are clearly derived from another movie, or perhaps even a TV show, are known by several different names, all of them beginning with the letter “r”.
Like, say, remake. Or rehash. Or maybe rejig. Reworking, is another one. And then there is reimagining, a recent addition to the list, a word which instantly tells the keen observer that perhaps they should consider going bowling this weekend instead.
And now there is a brand new “r” word for movies – or at least it is new to me. Perhaps I have not been paying close attention. This word is reboot. As in, reboot your computer and – well, that’s it really.
I am not familiar with the word in any other context, except from my GAA days long, long ago, when the U-12 coach would frequently roar, “Stop the fancy stuff, Keogh! Reboot it up the field!”
Although it is clearly a sequel – and a fairly decent one, too – Predators has been widely referred to as a reboot. Which suggests a restart, when in fact a better word would be refresh. Then again, considering what they’ve done here – gone back to the original and turned it on its head – the most honest thing to say is that Predators is a reversal. And hey, that’s three more “r” words!
Is anyone still reading? Hello?
Oh well. Predators opens with the excellent Adrien Brody hurtling through the clouds towards a jungle below, trying desperately to open his parachute before colliding at high speed with the ground. It’s an impressive first line.
Brody is black-ops mercenary Royce and he hasn’t a clue where he is or how he got there. But soon he’s joined by several more bewildered visitors from the sky, most of them professional killers.
There’s Israeli sniper Isabelle (Braga), Russian special forces officer Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), Hanzo the Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a Mexican drug lord enforcer (Danny Trejo), a fighter from Sierra Leone (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) and a death row murderer (Walton Goggins). The odd man out is young doctor Edwin (Topher Grace), who’s not exactly at home in an international death squad.
But soon enough, they all realise they’re not at home. They’re on another planet, in the middle of a huge game reserve and as Royce helpfully notes, “We’re the game”.
The hunters are our old friends the rastafarian predators, for whom the opening day of human season is the highlight of the year. They probably take bets, debating among themselves if any of these specimens can last as long as that big Arnold fellow years ago. Probably not, since they don’t have home advantage and besides, there’s a few other big vicious monsters thrown into the mix, just for a laugh.
There’s nothing much original going on and director Antal sticks firmly to the tried and trusted one-grisly-death-at-a-time format, or guess-the-last-man-standing, if you like.
But it’s enjoyable stuff all the same, at least for a while and it’s a fair sight better than any of the other attempts to keep the franchise alive. It might have been even better if producer Robert Rodriguez had put on his director’s hat and did more than simply influence some of the obvious visual touches.
There’ll be no prizes for writing or acting but Brody acquits himself well as an action man and Laurence Fishburne turns up to add a bit of gravitas. Though his name is not Abraham or Esau. Which is disappointing.