Directed by Nimród Antal
(R)
**
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Of all the sequels to 1987’s Predator (there have been three), this is by far the best—but that’s not saying a whole lot, said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Produced by Robert Rodriguez and directed by Nimród Antal, the sci-fi film starts off with promise, as a buffed-up Adrien Brody gets dropped from a plane onto an alien planet. He’s the leader of a team of elite warriors who are being hunted by the resident monsters. While the premise remains compelling, the “plot holes loom larger than the monstrous mayhem.” Predators plays like “Avatar with more gore, a lot less wit, and Adrien Brody,” said Chris Nashawaty in Entertainment Weekly. The first half of the film recalls the pulp fun of the original, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, but the rest is an “uninspired mess of mediocre action scenes.” In its best moments, Predators is an “unabashed B movie,” said Michael Rechtshaffen in The Hollywood Reporter. But those moments are few, and they eventually give way to “flat-out incoherence.”
