So, what do you suppose would happen if a giant weirdo like Robert Rodriguez decided to produce an alternative sequel to the 1987 film "Predator"? I know I was already intrigued, but then it got even weirder. Pretty soon he had hired on a promising director, Nimrod Antal, along with his Hungarian cinematographer, Gyula Pados, and Academy Award winner Adrien Brody.
Really? Adrien Brody? I wasn't sure at all how to feel about that. My movie snobbery was tearing me in all sorts of directions at this point. But never mind. I was headed down to see this movie at the soonest possible convenience. After all, it has been an incredibly bad year for movies, quite possibly the worst year in my movie viewing life. So perhaps, I thought, an over-produced Predator movie is exactly what we need.
Things took a slight turn to the surreal when I was carded at the box-office. I do have a young face. But seriously? It took me right back to the nineties when my friends and I would watch movies like this in dinghy rooms, always afraid we would be caught by our moms at any moment and severely chastised for succumbing to the temptations of rated 'R' cinema. I felt like I was being bad. I actually laughed perversely at the poor woman who asked me if I was old enough. I thought I was rather too old to be watching this sort of trashy popcorn. After all, I've seen Felini films.
Nevertheless, I was there. My money was spent, and I was deemed old enough to watch an Academy Award winning actor do battle against the dreaded alien bastards.
The film opens with our Academy Award winner falling from the sky. He doesn't know what's going on. We know because we saw the trailers. (Damned movie trailers, but that's a rant for another day.) Pretty soon he crashes down into a tropical paradise of some sort, and a whole bunch of scary bad-asses, including Danny Trejo, Alice Braga, and Topher Grace (WTF? Topher F*****g Grace? What is up with this movie?), continue to crash down around him. There is some confusion as they begin trying to beat each other up. And I was already having the best time I had had watching a movie since "The Book of Eli" in January.
There are a lot of directors in Hollywood who think that if you are chosen to make a sci-fi/horror/thriller, the proper thing to do is to film it in the ugliest place you can find, desaturate everything to a cold blue-green-grey color, and then drench everything in thick, pulpy, fake blood. My friend Nimrod, director of one of my absolute favorite weird movies (Kontroll), is much wiser than this. Predators is filmed in Hawaii, with georgeous cinematography, and ironically subtle camera work. There were a couple of moments where I was so overwhelmed by the visual wonders before my eyes that I started to believe I was watching a serious movie. But then...
"OMFG! Did you see that predator rip out that guys spinal chord? That was freakin' sic! Aaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"....
But then, this movie did have an awful lot of dialogue too. I was completely enthralled by the glorious badness of it. It proves that a movie can still be bad in all the good old ways. If you watch it, please take note not of what the movie does but of what it doesn't do, and you will understand why this movie is a masterpiece of calculated restraint. It gives the audience just enough for your $8.50. I highly recommend it to all geeks and movie snobs who think that every other movie this year would have been improved if somebody's spinal chord had been ripped out by an alien.
