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The Predator films are a fran­chise that doesn’t have the great­est his­tory.  The first is a savvy action/sci-fi hybrid and a macho clas­sic, to boot.  A sequel fol­lowed a few years later: fans are divided over its mer­its but it did ben­e­fit from big bud­get resources that showed the stu­dio was tak­ing it seri­ously.  After Predator 2… a long period of inac­tiv­ity on the big screen but it con­tin­ued via comics in an Alien Vs. Predator series.  When that crossover favorite finally made it to the big screen, the results were suc­cess­ful to inspire its own sequel but both films were typ­i­cal mod­ern genre-trash: loud, stu­pid and totally unin­spired in every way.

Over two decades later, Predator has finally got­ten a proper third film in its fran­chise.  The film­mak­ers behind it wisely avoided resum­ing any past sto­ry­lines, instead choos­ing to start fresh with a new group of char­ac­ters being intro­duced to the Predator phe­nom­ena.  The end result fea­tures a lot of famil­iar ele­ments but nego­ti­ates them in a way that is more suc­cess­ful and sat­is­fy­ing than either of the Alien Vs. Predator fiascos.

Predators opens in media res with Royce (Adrien Brody), our mys­te­ri­ous anti-hero, awak­en­ing from uncon­scious­ness to find him­self freefalling through the air.  A para­chute allows him to crash-land in the mid­dle of an unknown trop­i­cal jun­gle, where he quickly meets up with a diverse group of char­ac­ters, includ­ing a drug car­tel enforcer (Danny Trejo), a silent yakuza (Louis Ozama Changchien) and a lovely but tough woman (Alice Braga) who hap­pens to be an pro­fes­sional sniper.  Each has weapons at their dis­posal but no guid­ance as to where they are or what they are sup­posed to do.  Even worse, none of them know how or why they ended up there.

Anyone famil­iar with the first Predator film won’t be sur­prised to dis­cover that our thrown-together group of mys­tery heroes soon find them­selves being hunted by crab-faced, rasta-dreaded aliens who have invisibility-cloaking devices and a fond­ness for bladed weaponry.  However, there are some inter­est­ing twists and reveals and they are best expe­ri­enced with­out prior knowl­edge so Your Humble Reviewer will refrain from addi­tional syn­op­siz­ing.  Suffice to say, there’s plenty of humanoid vs. preda­tor sus­pense, plen­ti­ful action and more than a lit­tle alien gore before it all winds down.

The end results aren’t as great as the orig­i­nal Predator but then again, that’s not really a fair com­par­i­son.  This is clearly a b-division pro­duc­tion for the stu­dio, farmed out to Robert Rodriguez for pro­duc­ing and done on a decent but not mas­sive bud­get.  On this studio-produced b-movie level, Predators fares well.  The script does a solid job of reveal­ing its story and char­ac­ters in stages and the mystery-driven approach gives the mate­r­ial a real shot of life.  The more action-oriented sec­ond half isn’t as inter­est­ing as the spooky first half but that’s inevitable with this sort of approach.

Predators fur­ther ben­e­fits from com­mit­ted work by a col­or­ful and well-chosen cast.  Brody does well cast against type as the tough-guy anti­hero and Braga adds a carefully-deployed emo­tional com­po­nent to the film while liv­ing up to its action require­ments.  Changchien and Trejo add fla­vor to the sup­port­ing cast, as do Topher Grace as a doc­tor who seems sorely mis­matched to this sit­u­a­tion and Oleg Taktarov as a Russian sol­dier who may be the bravest of the bunch.  Lawrence Fishburne also plays a role in the film (you can see him in the trailer) — opin­ions are divided on his work here but it’s best left to the audi­ence to dis­cover for themselves.

Finally, the film is directed in a con­fi­dent style by Nimrod Antal.  This new-ish direc­tor deliv­ered a tight, sus­pense­ful thriller a few years back with Vacancy and he shows a sim­i­lar sense of nar­ra­tive econ­omy here.  His craft-conscious approach that Predators has a smooth pace and deliv­ers admirably on both the action and sus­pense fronts.   He doesn’t rein­vent the wheel but his direc­tion is con­fi­dent and focused with­out rely­ing on a bunch of fast edit­ing or other post­mod­ern trick­ery — and that means a lot these days.