Predators admirably tries to recreate the vibe of Predator - men (and woman) on a mission, in a jungle, hunting / being hunted by a mostly invisible threat, and dying off one by one in spectacularly gruesome fashion. Machismo abounds, there's a twist involving one of the characters that should be transparently obvious from the first moment you see Carl Weathers / Topher Grace, and finally the hero (Arnold / Adrien Brody) has a man-a-mano showdown with "one ugly motherfucker." Predators both succeeds and fails miserably in its aims, but what's surprising is how entertaining the film is, when one factors in its many faults.
I like the idea of opening the film with Adrien Brody in free-fall; it's disorienting, kinetic, and honestly pretty stupid. A Predator-designed parachute opens, he lands, title card: PREDATORS. Then the movie turns into Lost for about 20 minutes, partly because of the Hawaiian location shooting, partly because of Antal's choice of shots and editing, but mostly thanks to John Debney's score, which eventually settles into a Predator-like groove. There's a moment after the cast members (which include Danny Trejo, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov, Louis Ozawa Changchien, and Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) are wandering around identifying their background that one can literally say "Okay, there's Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Jin, Mr. Eko, and what the hell, Danny Trejo is Hurley."The stupid just ramps up from there: I will redirect you to Roger Ebert's review for two glaring examples of "wait, that doesn't make sense", and add that despite the fact that the sun never moves (pointed out by Brody's Royce early in the film), the second half of the movie nevertheless takes place between dusk and dawn on Predator game world. Predators is the kind of movie where a cast member specifically refers to the first Predator and the fact that "during his debriefing," Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger - not in the film or mentioned by name) mentioned that he covered himself in mud to hide from the heat sensitive Predator-vision, and then it takes another THIRTY minutes for any character to take that advice.
But what did I really expect here? This is a movie where a Yakuza member has a samurai duel with a Predator and (SPOILER) wins! A film that flagrantly lifts the iconography of Aliens' "Game Over, man!" scene in order to show a prisoner-type stabbing a Predator with a shiv. The kind of movie that introduces a Predator that wears a jawbone on his mask or that shows the audience a Falconer Predator that NEVER USES HIS FALCON AGAIN! I'm not actually sure what purpose it served in the first place, except for a good excuse to use aerial photography for one sequence.
The coup de grace of ridiculous in Predators is Laurence Fishburne's part as a survivor of a previous hunting expedition on the Predator "Game Preserve" planet. Regardless of the fact that his story is undercut by the fact that the chronology of hunting "seasons" means he could have been there for three weeks tops, Fishburne plays Noland as a scenery chewing nutjob in what has to be the funniest twenty minutes of an already hilarious movie. At no point is he every anything more than foolish talking to his invisible friend or giving googly-eyed stares at the surviving cast members, and while it grinds the momentum of the film to a halt completely, his role is so arbitrary that I can only think it may have once served another purpose.
Imagine, if you will, that when Fishburne lifts off his pilfered Predator helmet (with invisibility cloak), it was instead Arnold Schwarzenegger or Danny Glover. Let's say that this mysterious new character was instead one of the survivors from Predator or Predator 2. If kept a secret, the audience would flip out, but more importantly, they'd trust that character unquestionably. I mean, Dutch and Mike Harrigan both beat a Predator, so if they've survived this place, no harm can come to the cast, right? If that's the case, then the Noland character's betrayal of our heroes is more of a shock. I get the impression that Schwarzenegger couldn't do it and Glover passed, so Fishburne comes in as a character the audience doesn't know and who is immediately suspicious of, dulling his "twist."
So we've come to the kicker, where I've told you about some of the non-stop idiotic plot points, logic gaffes, and holes you could drive a truck through, and yet I liked Predators. It's inexplicable; I do not know how it is I came out of the movie saying that I enjoyed the film. Almost nothing works, especially when you consider that Predators seriously expects you to buy that Adrien Brody is more of a bad-ass than Arnold Schwarzenegger was in 1987. Nevertheless, the film is consistently entertaining, the violence and gore are on par with Predator, and half of the characters make an impression before they die in horrible ways.
Sure, none of it makes sense, and I should really be taking the film to task for that (especially since that's one of the reasons Inception works as well as it does - review tomorrow), but I have a soft spot for those ludicrous 80s action films. Things like physics, logic, and narrative coherence weren't paramount. What mattered was that the hero stuck to his guns and that the villain was almost unbeatable. If the action set pieces were good (and most of them are in Predators) and the macho oozed out of the screen, then it wasn't always necessary that a film like Predator had to be thought provoking.
Predators also gets points for knowing where and when to throw in references to the original. There's no "one ugly motherfucker" line, and while they do repeat the "fall into the river" scene and "everybody shoots into the jungle" mini-gun scene, Predators parses it out in such a way that it fits into what little story there is in this sequel. Even the Aliens homage / rip-off scene went largely unnoticed by the audience. I give serious credit to Debney to saving the actual music from Predator (and a clever song tie-in) until the credits. There's a reasonably interesting idea in the film that Predators also hunt each other, and it's fair to say that while none of the characters could wipe the ass of Jesse Ventura's Blain, they all stand out in their own way and have more identifiable traits in the film (particularly Goggins's Stans, who has one of the more memorable speeches in the film - you'll never think of 5 o'clock the same way again).
And so, despite every instinct in me as a film scholar, critic, and fan, I have to say that for some of you Predators is absolutely worth seeing. You won't like it - I'd go so far as to say you'll be intellectually offended by just about everything - but you will enjoy it and, more importantly, not feel ripped off in the same way AvP and AvP:R did. This is a movie designed specifically for people who like Predator, so if that's not you, or if you turned your nose up at the fact the Cap'n reviewed this in the first place, go see Inception instead. Then I'll meet with you tomorrow to discuss that.
For the rest of you, have fun with the first actually good sequel to Predator*.
* I have a soft spot for Predator 2, but let's not pretend it's anything better than a shitty movie, okay gang?
1 comment:
Why was Lawrence fishburne sent to that planet in the first place?
Post a Comment