Being Hunted: Actors Adrien Brody and Alice Braga in the next installment of the movie 'Predators.' (Rico Torres/ Twentieth Century Fox)
Returning to the primal basics of man vs beast, and relocating (after Predator 2’s concrete version) to the jungle setting of the original hunt (albeit on a different planet), Vacancy director Nimrod Antal works from a decades old Robert Rodriguez script that begins with a man (Adrien Brody) plummeting from the sky at terminal velocity and landing on a world of unknown origin. He is not alone. Joining him are an assortment of outcasts – death row pervert (Walton Goggins), Chechen soldier (Oleg Taktarov), evasive doctor (Topher Grace), disgraced female mercenary (Alice Braga) – who not only have to protect themselves from one another, but the titular huntsmen in order to “get to de choppa”, or space craft on this occasion.
It’s safe to say that Predators is the film you’ve been waiting 23 years for. It won’t change the face of cinema as we know it, but it’s raw, stripped back, irony free B-movie action that sets a high precedent for this summer’s lacklustre fare.
Antal does so much right in striking a balance between being faithful to the franchise and creating his own beast. There is the striking use of Alan Silvestri’s wonderfully intimidating signature theme, and frequent echoes of some of the more iconic dialogue. But the respectfully steady hand with which Antal operates means that there are no tongues in cheeks here.
Knowing full well that the film can’t compete with the wow factor reveals used in previous instalments, the script successfully plays with your expectations by commendably holding back on showing the Predators. So instead you get the tension riddled experience of staring at a shimmering green canvas, watching, waiting, for the slightest hint of movement. It’s a patience that is very rarely afforded or adhered to in this genre, especially in this current videogame dominated climate.
What this does allow is time to get to know the “human predators”, and it’s here that Rodriguez’s script excels. They may be caricatures – Brody is good but he’s no Arnie, and Laurence Fishburne growls his way through a ridiculous Colonel Kurtz cameo – but the set-up is rewarding because it gets you to root for this group of assorted scumbags.
When the action arrives it’s kinetic, breathless stuff. An inventive booby trap sequence, an alien stampede, the carcass splattered campsite showdown, and a rather brilliant Predator vs samurai stand-off are all original enough for you to forgive the slightly twist-heavy, sometimes silly finale. It lacks the ingenuity of McTiernan’s original, but tantalisingly hints that there are more hunts to come.
Rating: 
4 / 5
4 / 5
