Since its introduction in 1987, Predator has become a great pop-culture flick for sci-fi action. Thanks to its box office success, it has spawned a 1990 sequel starring Danny Glover and set in L.A. which was a dud. With the film franchise seemingly dead,  two “crossover” Alien vs. Predator flicks were released to boost interest but they just made things worse. Predators is indeed better than Predator 2 and the two AVPs; however since those films set the bar pretty low, that’s not saying much. Is this movie finally worth the price of an admission ticket? Find out after the jump.

The film opens with Royce (played by Adrian Brody) on a free fall from the sky. Like the opening sequence, the film starts off promising then goes off into a free fall once it reaches the halfway point. The good news is that the film doesn’t quite land on a ‘thud’ as certain highlights saved the film from being just another craptacular addition to the Predator franchise.

We are then quickly introduced to a series of other characters that also plopped down from the sky. These folks don’t know each other and all hail from different parts of the Earth. Somehow they all happen to speak fluent English (but let’s not be picky about the little details). Among the group of individuals there is Isabelle (Alice Braga) who is a black ops sniper, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo) a drug cartel enforcer, Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) a death squad officer from Sierra Leone, Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov) a Russian Spetsnaz commando, Stans (Walton Goggins) a death-row inmate, Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien) a Yazuka enforcer and Edwin (Topher Grace) who happens to just be a physician. A common theme among the individuals is that they happen to be killers on Earth, with the exception of the doctor.

With Royce taking on the leadership role, they decide to band together and explore the forest to figure out where they were. Questions begin to pop up. Is this a dream? Is it hell? One of them then asks “What if we’re dead?” Insert obligatory Lost joke here. Eventually the exploration leads them to an opening with a breathtaking view of a sun that doesn’t move and two other planets looming in the horizon. Clearly they aren’t in Kansas anymore.

After a series of deadly encounters with the alien hunters and a chance encounter with a human survivor named Noland (Laurence Fishburne), everything comes into place and they realize they’re being hunted and begin to fight for their survival.

On paper, the cast may not have looked all that great, but they managed to pull it off. The film doesn’t really build on character development (some may argue that each character is more of a cardboard cutout), but they did have distinct personalities and brought something different to the table. Adrien Brody seems like an unlikely choice as the macho action hero but he pulls it off with his gravelly scratchy voice. In a way, this was actually smart casting because it just highlights that we don’t need a typical meathead warrior to defeat the bigger stronger Predators. It’s not just raw strength, but intelligence is a huge factor as well. Another questionable casting choice was Topher Grace, but once again he managed to shine in this film. While he was the odd one out as the weakling doctor, he provided some much needed comic-relief along with Walton Goggins. Laurence Fishburne had very limited screentime as the lone human survivor from past hunting seasons, but he definitely made a mark. While I felt his character was underused, it was a nice outlet for the filmmakers to make a reference to Apocalypse Now as Fishburne channelled his inner Marlon Brando and played a character that was on the edge of going loony like Colonel Kurtz.

The biggest problem with Predators is that we’ve all seen it before back when it was called Predator. The new film doesn’t really bring anything new to the table aside from throwing in a few random predator dogs and putting these characters on a new planet. Even in a new foreign planet, the setting itself is way too similar to the original film. There’s a fine line between paying homage to something and just simply doing a rehash. While it is tough to escape the ‘hunt’ concept (since it is a Predator film), it is not necessary to take bits and pieces of the first film and replay it here. What makes sequels truly work is when they introduce something new to the table and this movie hasn’t quite done the job.

Sometimes bringing up old ideas isn’t entirely bad. The best scene in the movie was the swordfight sequence between Hanzo and one of the predators was a nice tribute to those Samurai flicks out there. While the scene itself didn’t gel very well with the movie as a whole, it was quite amusing to watch Hanzo duel the predator with a katana in an open field of wind-swept grass.

Nimrod Antal is not a bad filmmaker. While his resume isn’t full of bright spots (Vacancy, Armored), he did demonstrate that he is indeed a competent filmmaker. From the moment the characters started dropping from the sky to the halfway mark of the film, Antal really captured the tension and suspense very well. While it wasn’t enough to get the nails to dig into the armrests of the chair in the theatre, Antal successfully invited the audience to rediscover the terrifying aspects of being lost in a potentially dangerous place. Also with a tight budget, he pulled off all the action sequences just fine and there were a few notable moments that featured some good camerawork.

The pacing of the start started off very strong. Like any successful suspense/thriller, he slowly peeled off layers of the film to draw us in before letting everything loose. The problem is that he let everything go at the wrong time. It was scary when the characters were being plucked off one by one, but then a mass killing spree starts and the tone of the film shifts from a sci-fi horror flick into a full on regular action movie. In the original Predator film, even the final showdown was tense to the very last minute, which is something this film lacks.

The movie could use a little more imagination in some of the kills and perhaps build on the plot point that it’s not just Earth’s deadliest killers that are running around on the Predator planet. Of course, there’s always room to expand on ideas. That’s what additional sequels are for!

Robert Rodriguez (who produced the film) and Nimrod Antal have been promising all along that this will finally be a sequel worthy of being a good follow-up to John McTiernan’s 1987 film. While they had all the right intentions, the execution fell a bit short. This is a decent Predator sequel, but it’s not the ultimate follow-up we were hoping for. Rodriguez hoped that Predators would be what James Cameron’s Aliens was to Ridley Scott’s Alien, but ambition alone does not do the trick. That being said, Predators turned out to be a solid B-action movie that delivered the fun and thrills of a sci-fi action film. At a fraction of the production cost of a typical big budget summer tentpole, the film stayed true to the tone of the original film (for the most part) with its minimalist special effects. The film won’t blow your mind, but at least you’ll have fun watching things get blown away. After 23 years of disappointment, what more could you really ask for?

Rating: ★★★☆☆