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Predators
herine Bray
"I just came up with any cool idea that I would ever want to see in a Predator movie and shoved it all in one script." So says Robert Rodriguez, producer of Predators and writer of an early - very early - 1994 version of the screenplay. Whatever changes have been made in the meantime, this is what the film delivers, and that's both good and bad. On the plus side, there are plenty of strong individual scenes, set-pieces and - yes - cool ideas. It doesn't notch up quite the same levels of violent glee as the original 1987 Predator, but there's a back-to-basics integrity that, despite being set on an alien planet, gives the film a more down-to-earth feel than anything in either Predator 2 or the corporate joke that was the Alien Vs Predator.
Sadly, Predators' plot is little more than a bare, workmanlike string on which to thread these cool ideas, without much attention paid to shaping a compelling story. It's easy to argue that you can get on just fine without a compelling story in a monster-driven movie, but the best of the bunch - Jaws, The Thing, Alien - thrive on the winning equation of cool monster, plus story, plus character.
Predators' story might be weedy, but the characters aren't, being mostly pumped-up seven-foot tall thugs. Topher Grace is a contrasting standout as a sexy doctor, pitched as the Everyman of the group, the guy we can all identify with. Then there's a Ben Gunn-type who reveals himself to our heroes a tad more dramatically than seems wise considering they're a bunch of freaked out trigger-happy killers, while Alice Braga does a good job as the sort of female lead that patronising reviews might describe as "feisty".
Perhaps surprisingly, the hitherto svelte Adrien Brody works well as a Hemingway-quoting muscle-man, despite for some reason using an unnecessary Christian-Bale-as-Batman voice. Whither the falsetto black-ops agent? Surely they don't all sound like they subsist on a diet of gravel smoothies.
There are various valiant attempts to give the rest of the pack distinguishing characteristics, but let's be honest, their primary function is grist to the monster-mill. Much of the film is spent wondering who will be next to cop it, with this ten little Indians format injecting little in the way of surprises, but providing some stylishly-staged deaths.
You won't be too sorry to see some of 'em go, either. The superbly named Walton Goggins (who has evidently come a long way since being credited as 'Research Tech' in The Bourne Identity) plays mass-murderer Stans, who dreams about getting off the planet, whereupon he intends to "rape so many fine-ass bitches." It's not exactly Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption hoping the Pacific will be as blue as his dreams.
Something that does feel like a missed opportunity is the film's reluctance to explore the heart of the hunter/hunted set-up. The Predators are big game fans engaged in their favourite sport, and at one point they even flush out their targets with dogs - let's hear more about their world, please. For instance, are all members of the species into this sport, or do they have an equivalent of the anti-foxhunting lobby? More importantly, how would you, the prey, be tracked, and what would you do to counter that?
As in many films, at no point does anybody appear to need to eat or go to the loo, but while in most films there are good reasons for skipping past this stuff, in a world where Predators would surely use these survival issues to finesse the hunt, it'd be good to see how our team of hard-cases would handle the Bear Grylls side of things. Nothing too explicit - I'm not saying we need to see Laurence Fishburne squatting over an improvised bush-latrine, or a Predator bending intently over a freshly laid spore or anything - but a little more attention to the mechanics of being hunted and tracked could have made for more nitty-gritty humanity between the explosive set-pieces. While it's a leap to identify with murderers and gang members, we can all identify with feeling hungry or hounded.
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