Predators!

I watched the 2010 movie Predators yesterday. I've a great affection for the original Predator and I might be one of the few humans on Earth who thinks that Predator 2 was also a pretty good flick. I liked the cast and I liked the way the "urban jungle" was used. But after those two, the Predator disappeared for some time, sticking around only in some comics.

This most recent sequel produced by Robert Rodriquez eschews the Predator/Alien movies (the first of which is a cracking good movie I think while the second is a bomb) and moves forward as if they never happened. Frankly there's nothing in this sequel that undoes any of the work of the first PVP movie at all that I can see. The first movie is specifically referenced, but none of the others ever are, even the second which presumably is still inside this continuity.

Rarely has a movie begun so deeply in the middle of the action. I loved the beginning as we literally meet our cast as they tumble out of the sky. They spend the first thirty minutes of the movie meeting one another (a gang of malcontents and misanthropes all) and seek to find the answer to where they are, how they got there, and why they are there.

It's a solid mystery and I won't spoil some of the surprises. Needless to say the group of well-armed warriors find themselves fighting some mean-ass Predators. Some new Predator gear is revealed (a recon hawk-like robot for one) and we meet the Predator hounds.

The key to a movie like this is the gang assembled to battle the Predators, and this movie offers up an intriguing bunch. Like the original team, visually distinctive and compelling. This group is equipped to battle the Predators, though predictably they don't fare very well most of the time. I was surprised frankly how convincing as a tough guy Adrien Brody proved to be.

I highly recommend this movie. If you liked the lean tough-guy aspect of the original, you'll like this one. Many times scenes from the original are evoked by sequences in this one. And they do some neat twists on the original material.



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