Predators

Not quite as good as I had hoped but far better than Predator 2. A more logical follow on to the original by placing the action back in the jungle. Adrian brody was a lot more convincing in the roll of a tough mercenary than I expected he would be and the rest of the cast were good in their roles. The film quality is excellent in Blu-Ray

Predators is the latest variation on the classic short story The Most Dangerous Game where hunters become the hunted. Opening like a Saw film, a group of strangers wake up in a remote location to find themselves pawns in a deadly game devised by their mysterious captor. They must forge an uneasy alliance with each other if they're going to survive. This seemingly disparate group has one thing in common: they're all killers.
American mercenary Royce is a lone wolf who nevertheless finds himself taking on a leadership role in the group. The other members include: Isabelle , an Israeli military sniper; Stans , a convicted serial killer; Cuchillo, a Mexican drug cartel enforcer; Nikolai , a Russian special forces commando; Mombasa , an African death squad member; and Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a Yakuza enforcer. The only one who appears out of place is Edwin, a disgraced doctor.

They soon realize that they're not on Earth at all but rather an alien planet, a game preserve where they're the prey. A battle of wits ensues with the Predators. Can Royce and Co. outwit their hunters long enough to escape from the Predators' planet? Predators is one of this summer's most surprisingly fun movies. It's a solid if somewhat unremarkable sequel, but one that's nevertheless the closest in spirit and execution to the 1987 original. As the best Predator movie since the first film, Predators successfully erases the odious memory of Predator 2 and those silly AvP movies. It makes the eponymous alien cool and scary again, and restores the franchise to its gritty and gory roots.

One of the best decisions made here was to set the story on the Predators' hunting planet, even if it does look an awful lot like Hawaii or Honduras. That actually helps explain why the Predator chose Latin America for the first film -- he was homesick! As in the original, this film takes its time to reveal the Predators, establishing its multi-national cast of human characters (a.k.a. Predator fodder) before bringing in the titular manhunters. This installment also introduces us to the social hierarchy on the Predator world, where Super Predators actually hunt and torture the "regular" Predators we've known of thus far. There are also "Predator dogs," who are actually a lot cooler and scarier than they sound.

Brody is fine as the anti-hero whose understanding of how to hunt and kill men makes him understand the Predators more than he'd care to admit. One drawback, though, is that Brody speaks in a raspy "tough guy movie voice" throughout, which is a bit cliche seeing as how Christian Bale has now raised that (or lowered it, depending on who you ask) to an art form. Laurence Fishburne appears in a small role as a survivor who's been stranded for years on the Predators' hunting world. And while Noland begins as a man who has ventured into his own personal Joseph Conrad-like heart of darkness, he ultimately becomes more akin to Tim Robbins in War of the Worlds. It's a brief enough appearance that the movie isn't derailed by this borderline over-the-top sequence.

Grace's role isn't as large as you might suspect, but he lends a darkly comic relief to the scenes he's in. It's Goggins who nearly steals the show as the sociopath Death Row inmate given a new lease on life. You can imagine that it's a short-term lease. Braga brings grit and restraint to her turn as Isabelle, while Changchien, Taktarov and Ali all ooze macho-cool in their one-dimensional roles. Trejo may be basically playing his usual badass persona, but it would've been nice to have seen more done with his character.

While there weren't as many inventive kills here as there could have been, director Nimrod Antal and writer-producer Robert Rodriguez have crafted a crowd-pleasing but familiar Predator movie that mirrors many of the beats of the original film even as it whets your appetite for more movies featuring everyone's favorite intergalactic hunter.