On Hunting for a Good Predator Film

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter". This ridiculous quote from a great author (Hemingway) remains, in Predators, a ridiculous quote, but now in a terrible film rather than in an otherwise impressive body of work. Being dropped from a plane unconscious and landing in an unknown, hostile environment as the latest prey for a team of alien predators is a good set-up, yet producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal have seemingly achieved the near impossible and created an action sci-fi without one pulse-raising moment.

The predator is a good alien invention but has never had a film worthy of its creation, unlike its peer and sometimes enemy, the alien of Alien (1979), Aliens (1986) and Alien 3 (1992) etc. The exception, it could be argued, is Predator (1987), yet since then the ultimate hunters, who offer, through their humanistic characteristics something recognizable, have never been allowed to develop in a manner which will allow them to be the feature of a predator film. Here, the predators barely feature and we are instead stuck with a frustrating group of stereotypes who utter cliched dialogue and meaningless quotes (see above) in an attempt to add gravitas to what is complete trash. Casting Adrien Brody against type is a good idea, as is Lawrence Fishburne's schizophrenic survivor, but both positives are negated by bad dialogue. Unfortunately, a sequel is a distinct possibility.