I Miss U all my Blog

Alien rocked what we knew about science fiction films, and when it came time to release the sequel James Cameron added an “s” to the title and Aliens proved to radically reinvent what we already loved in a spectacular way. With Predators Nimrod Antal adds an “s” to Predator but don’t expect the same results.

This has been an odd summer for me and the movies, there are far too few films I am excited about and very few of the films I have seen do I end up genuinely loving and excited about. Predators falls into the former category; while I genuinely like Arnold’s original, I can’t recall much about the sequel and wouldn’t touch the Alien vs. Predator films with a ten foot pole. However, knowing Robert Rodriguez was involved with Predators and the pretty slick trailer made me interested in Predators. I can’t say that Predators is a lackluster film, but what I can say is that Predators doesn’t deliver everything you would want it to deliver.

Set on a kind of alien game preserve, Predators follows a group of mercenaries and con’s who have been kidnapped off Earth without their knowledge – waking up only to find themselves parachuting through the sky and landing in a jungle. They eventually find each other and team up, discovering they are not in Kansas any more, and in fact they are being hunted by forces they can’t seem to find.

The concept is right out of The Most Dangerous Game but is nowhere near as well executed. Perhaps what’s the biggest issues for me is that Predators falls into the modern action film trap where many things are brought up, but apparently for no reason. Exhibit A would be when Isabelle recalls the CIA report about the special ops force that was ambushed by an unknown predator in the jungles in 1987 and only one member of the team survived, blocking the aliens infared by covering himself in mud. You’d think this would come in as useful information that perhaps the characters would file away for future use seeing as they get mowed down one after another but nope. It’s a throwaway.

However, possibly the strangest thing EVER is the sudden appearance of Noland, played by Laurence Fishburne, who appears to “help” our team of prey for no apparent reason besides the writer got tired of having the Predator’s randomly attack. The character is a mcguffin, in the film only to reveal one tidbit of information but take up fifteen minutes of screentime.

What makes the film a letdown as an action film is that even though the film has a R rating instead of PG-13 I watched the action sequences feeling like they were missing any substance that should make them R rated. It was as if Antal and clan assumed they’d have to be slapped with the PG-13 rating and shot some very simplistic action sequences because all the good parts would have to be cut for rating anyway. It’s either that or Antal has no idea how to either shoot effects or action.

What did surprise me about Predators is that I believed Adrien Brody as an action star. He was actually quite good in the role of a hardened mercenary who’s only out for his own skin. I would actually like to see him do something hard and action-like again.

While Predators is a decent watch, I think it’s going to end up like the rest of the Predator sequels – forgotten when the next installment comes out.

Director: Nimrod Antal
Writers: Alex Litvak & Michael Finch
Royce: Adrien Brody
Edwin: Topher Grace
Isabelle: Alice Braga
Stans: Walton Goggins
Nikolai: Oleg Taktrov
Noland: Laurence Fishburne
Cuchillo: Danny Trejo
Hanzo: Louis Ozawa Changchien
Mombasa: Mahershalalhashbaz Ali

Isabelle: We need to work as a team.
Cuchillo: Does this look like a team orientated group of individuals to you?

In a world where inflation has run to the point that the class system is ever more evident, Remy works as a repo man for The Union a company that among many things offers mechanical organs at a high price to those that need a medical solution. If you can’t make your payments, Remy or one of his partners will come and repossess your implant. The problem is Remy never sees this as murder, merely as a business transaction, until he ends up on the receiving end of a transplant. With a new perspective Remy becomes unable to continue being a repo man and ends up running from The Union.

Repo Man is an entertaining movie – entertaining but not great. This has nothing to do with Jude Law, Liev Schreiber or Forest Whitaker but more to do with the fact that this is a film that thinks it’s a Philip K. Dick story – the only one that can pull off a Philip K. Dick idea is Philip K. Dick. The world of Repo Men is a world where dystopia reigns, the government and corporations extort the people and the poor have no option but to run. The entire time I watched this film I felt like it was an homage to Bladerunner but wasn’t aware of it.

Also, whether it was unrelated or not I found it odd that this film follows so closely on the heels of Repo: the Genetic Opera. I have not seen Repo but it’s not every day that films about a future society that collects the organs of people who can’t pay comes out and yet Repo Men comes out only a year after the rock opera…

The great thing about this film was Jude Law. I’ve never really considered myself a die hard fan of Law, but the more I see him in the more I appreciate him. Even though Repo Man falls just short of being a great film, Law is charismatic, entertaining and manages to make Remy into an engaging and sympathetic character. Law is an incredibly talented actor of this Hollywood generation and I look forward to the journey he will take as he continues to expand his resume through the next few years.

I wish I had more to say about Repo Men but honestly, one of the reasons the film stops short of being a great film is that the film itself is a little confusing to figure out – it makes a left when the entire length of the film it tells you it’s making a right – and I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. I mean no disrespect to Miguel Sapochnik, but I almost feel that if the film were in the hands of another director perhaps the feeling of being cheated by the third act and the Philip K. Dick homage would be gone…

Director: Miguel Sapochnik
Writers: Eric Garcia & Garrett Lerner
Remy: Jude Law
Jake: Forest Whitaker
Beth: Alice Braga
Frank: Liev Schreiber