Battle of the 'Predator' all-scars
Oscar-winner Adrien Brody steps out of his acting comfort zone as Royce.
(20th Century Fox)
Predators
Running time: 107 minutes
MPAA rating: R (strong creature violence and gore, and pervasive language)
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Have you ever had that frightening dream where you're falling, falling, falling?
The special ops mercenary portrayed by Adrien Brody in "Predators" finds himself in that terrifying helpless position. There's an added dilemma, however. For Royce (Brody), it isn't a dream.
"Predators," co-produced by Austin-based Robert Rodriguez, reboots terror into a sci-fi thriller franchise that had not only run out of energy but had gotten downright silly in sequels 2 and 3 in recent years.
There are no clash-of-the-titans confrontations between the cloaking sport hunters from outer space and their rival Aliens in this one. In the Rodriguez-conceived throwback to the 1987 original, hunters become the hunted.
Rodriquez wrote the script that forms the core of this adventure in the early '90s when Sony was fishing for a suitable first sequel. That film never got made. At least it didn't until now with American expatriate Nimrod Antal ("Armored," "Vacancy") in the director's chair and first-timers Alex Litvak and Michael Finch polishing the script.
Royce is just one of nine strangers plumeting at break-neck (literally) speed toward a lush jungle below. He grabs madly for a ripcord and finds none. Just above the treetops, however, his chute deploys, as do those of most of the others.
One chute fails to open, so the ninth person expires suddenly; a stick-in-the-mud. Seven men and one women survive the terror ride of their lives. That's just the initial alarm, though as Antal and Rodriguez restore real terror to the "Predator" franchise.
We soon learn what the recently fallen do. The lush jungle (filmed in Hawaii and at Troublemaker Studios in Austin) may look Earthly, but it's not.
The edgy thrown-together group includes Royce, the special ops guy, Isabelle (Alice Braga of "I Am Legend"), the Israeli sniper, Walter (Walton Goggins of "The Shield" on FX), the death-row inmate, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo, coming up in Rodriguez's "Machete"), the Mexican drug gang enforcer, Edwin (Topher Grace), a doctor and others.
Through clever exposition of character, we learn that everyone dumped into an unfamiliar locale where the sun doesn't appear to move is a predator of some form or another, with the possible exception of the doc.
The real predators -- the clicking cloakers who have been known to do a little sport hunting on Earth -- are about the let the (unearthly) dogs out to see how game the newly arriving fresh meat really are.
Antal, a director who knows how to stir up terror on a movie screen, got my attention with "Kontroll," his edgy drama set in the bowels of the Budapest subway system. It played the U.S. festival circuit in 2004 before earning a limited wider release in '05.
What "Predators" does best is restore the human us-against-them element to a franchise that had dissolved into a sparring match between creatures from outer space.
Brody, recently on screen as a mad scientist, of sorts, in the bizarre sci-fi thriller "Splice," wanders even farther away from his dramatic comfort zone here.
With the exception of the scene where Royce rips off his shirt for combat, Brody (an Oscar winner for "The Pianist") works for me as the lead prey in a very strange land.
The special ops mercenary portrayed by Adrien Brody in "Predators" finds himself in that terrifying helpless position. There's an added dilemma, however. For Royce (Brody), it isn't a dream.
"Predators," co-produced by Austin-based Robert Rodriguez, reboots terror into a sci-fi thriller franchise that had not only run out of energy but had gotten downright silly in sequels 2 and 3 in recent years.
There are no clash-of-the-titans confrontations between the cloaking sport hunters from outer space and their rival Aliens in this one. In the Rodriguez-conceived throwback to the 1987 original, hunters become the hunted.
Rodriquez wrote the script that forms the core of this adventure in the early '90s when Sony was fishing for a suitable first sequel. That film never got made. At least it didn't until now with American expatriate Nimrod Antal ("Armored," "Vacancy") in the director's chair and first-timers Alex Litvak and Michael Finch polishing the script.
Royce is just one of nine strangers plumeting at break-neck (literally) speed toward a lush jungle below. He grabs madly for a ripcord and finds none. Just above the treetops, however, his chute deploys, as do those of most of the others.
One chute fails to open, so the ninth person expires suddenly; a stick-in-the-mud. Seven men and one women survive the terror ride of their lives. That's just the initial alarm, though as Antal and Rodriguez restore real terror to the "Predator" franchise.
We soon learn what the recently fallen do. The lush jungle (filmed in Hawaii and at Troublemaker Studios in Austin) may look Earthly, but it's not.
The edgy thrown-together group includes Royce, the special ops guy, Isabelle (Alice Braga of "I Am Legend"), the Israeli sniper, Walter (Walton Goggins of "The Shield" on FX), the death-row inmate, Cuchillo (Danny Trejo, coming up in Rodriguez's "Machete"), the Mexican drug gang enforcer, Edwin (Topher Grace), a doctor and others.
Through clever exposition of character, we learn that everyone dumped into an unfamiliar locale where the sun doesn't appear to move is a predator of some form or another, with the possible exception of the doc.
The real predators -- the clicking cloakers who have been known to do a little sport hunting on Earth -- are about the let the (unearthly) dogs out to see how game the newly arriving fresh meat really are.
Antal, a director who knows how to stir up terror on a movie screen, got my attention with "Kontroll," his edgy drama set in the bowels of the Budapest subway system. It played the U.S. festival circuit in 2004 before earning a limited wider release in '05.
What "Predators" does best is restore the human us-against-them element to a franchise that had dissolved into a sparring match between creatures from outer space.
Brody, recently on screen as a mad scientist, of sorts, in the bizarre sci-fi thriller "Splice," wanders even farther away from his dramatic comfort zone here.
With the exception of the scene where Royce rips off his shirt for combat, Brody (an Oscar winner for "The Pianist") works for me as the lead prey in a very strange land.
