movies: predators

It's time for one of those My Movie Past Confession moments...

While I saw (and enjoyed) the original Predator movie, I don't know that I've ever actually seen the second one all the way through... but I also quite enjoyed Alien vs Predator... but I haven't seen the second one of those either...

Predators, which I went to see solo, harkens back to the first one in a lot of ways... but without the somewhat pointless "commando mission" bit at the beginning, if only because it's set in a jungle and people are being picked off one at a time.

But as always with a sequel (which is what this is being billed as rather than a reboot... and there is a somewhat tenuous link to the original), they have to up the stakes... in this case with more Predators and a diverse (both ethnically and in background) group of "prey".

For the most part though, it was a "by the numbers" plot... the humans are all archetypes/stereotypes so they don't require a hell of a lot of backstory (in most cases none at all beyond what they were doing before the beginning of the movie) or development, and you knew who was going to make it to the final confrontation, although I will admit that there were some surprises at the climax of the movie, especially the very end... but for the most part, it just delivers what it promises on the box...

The human cast is about as good as you'd expect, although I was pleasantly surprised by Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, the former for his "action hero" chops, and the latter for what he did with the limited character he was given.

However the movie does sag somewhat in the middle... there's a whole section where I could have taken several bathroom breaks (and had to take one, in fact, because I'd bought a large drink) where there's not much happening, and the exposition that is given is a little hard to hear and I'm sure I missed a couple of the relevant details... something about big ones and little ones and time immemorial.

Actually the dialogue throughout was somewhat hard to hear at times, but I'm not sure if that was me, or the movie or just the sound system at the cinema.

All in all though, a serviceable action movie with a few moments of suspense but no real scares.

yani's rating: 2 triangular targeting lasers out of 5