Short Review: "I ain't got time to bleed...or sit through tedious movies."



When I first saw director Nimród Antal's 2003, Budapest-based, film Kontroll, I was thrilled. Here was a fresh, young director with a sharp eye, a strong voice and a talent for the odd. Then came is American debut Vacancy. I found it too harsh and bordering on torture porn. I figured it was a misstep as he entered into the world of Hollywood. Then came Armored. It had less violence, but it also had a lacking story. I began to wonder what happened to the guy who made that film all those years ago. Now, we have Predators. I can safely say that I was was wrong about Antal. Either his original flash of brilliance was youthful luck, or he extinguished it himself to get along in the corporate film world. Either way, I will no longer perk up when I see his name.

Predators is a reworking of the elements from the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger popcorn gun-fest, Predator. Like last summer's Terminator: Salvation, this film attempts to relaunch a dimming franchise. Like last summer's Terminator: Salvation, this film makes the fatal mistake of taking itself far too seriously.

The original Predator film is violent and stupid, but it works. It works because the broad concept of hunter aliens going up against some of Earth's best warriors is, at its heart, quite dumb. It shouldn't be taken seriously. This is why the presence of Jesse "The Body" Ventura adds to the proceedings. Heck, if he wore that stupid feather boa it would have made the movie that much better.

This reworking has the Earthly warriors dropped off on a distant planet which is actually a game reserve for the Predator aliens. For the first act of the film, the warriors stumble around, slowly discovering their situation. Antal quickly establishes a detailed, serious tone that promises a smarter version from their original.

Then the Predators show up and things get dumb.

If the screenwriters had simply saved their time and written the words "...and they all die one by one, like we've seen a thousand times before. Rinse. Repeat" in the script, we would still have the same movie.

The film drops its atmospheric tone and quickly stoops to being a by-the-numbers Pick-Off Movie. A Pick-Off Movie is one where a group of two-dimensional characters are introduced (the group of soldiers). A seemingly unstoppable force is then brought to bear (the Predators). The unstoppable force casually picks off the 2-D characters one by one until one or two are left.

Each of the doomed 2-D characters perform some act which leads to their demise. This acts as a moral barometer for the film - they sin, then they die. The "righteous" one or two people survive, thus showing the audience the proper way to live. This formula is the foundation for all horror movies.

Antal manages to touch on nearly every cliche available. He has the seething cracker, redneck, the crazy loner who talks to himself, the brooding hero who just wants to "work alone" and on and on. The deaths of the characters are all projected beforehand, so there is absolutely no surprises, no suspense. You know when someone will perish and when someone will miraculously be spared at the last minute. The whole affair is a tedious, predictable waste of your time.

If Antal and company had stayed with a thinking-man's version of the franchise, this could have been something interesting. If they had come to their senses and approached the subject with a smirk, even better. Instead they started off strong and then slowly realized they didn't have a story and fell back on the same old shtick. Your life is too short for shtick. Skip this one.


Worldview: The one element of the film that is of interest is a brief acknowledgment of Hell. The soldiers each wake up as they are parachuting onto the planet. They have been abducted and have no recollection of the their kidnapping. As they try to figure out what has happened, a couple of the soldiers decide they are dead and the team has found themselves in Hell.

This is interesting because they are in a version of Hell. Later in the film, this theme is touched upon by Royce as he explains each team member is a predator in their own right - soldiers, mercenaries, hit men, all people who excel at their profession and enjoy doing it. They have all sinned. For their sins, the aliens have selected them to be their prey.

The planet offers no hope, no survival. They will die and not pleasantly. God doesn't seem to exist in this world - only the demonic aliens rule.

Granted, Antal touches on this but fails to deliver anything meaningful. Instead he focuses on mundane fight sequences and shots of people wandering the jungle.


Cautions: It is called Predators - it is violent.




Related Reviews:
Laurence Fishburne movies
21 (2008)
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)


Other Critic's Reviews:
DarkMatters
San Francisco Chronicle



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Watching Movies Through a Christian Lens

This one has my attention. The premise is solid for a mass market movie. A young armored car guard gets wrapped up in a inside job to steal some money. Predictably, things go awry, but it does open itself for some good moral conflict. The fact that it is directed by Nimród Antal is icing on the cake.

The trailer gives far too much away however. I loathe trailers like this since it either means the advertising was handled by an inept crew or the film offers so little that they have to sell the whole thing to get people in the door. It would seem with this plot, the tease of the rookie locking himself in the truck would be enough to perk some interest.

Nimród Antal's debut is a fantastic piece of film. I had grown weary of watching films and this film reinvigorated my interest. Taking place in the Budapest subways, this film follows a group of ticket inspectors headed by the mopey Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi). The group patrol the dank subway fighting with patrons and grumbling about their awful stations in life. Bulcsú has given up on life and literally lives in the tunnels below ground. His quiet misery is disturbed by two people, Szofi (Eszter Balla), the meek daughter of a drunken train conductor who meanders into the subway always dressed up like a pink bear and a mysterious hooded figure who is pushing patrons in front of the trains. A gang of fighting misfits, a girl in a pink bear suit and a hooded murderer? It may sound like yet another quirky independent flick with goofy characters and clever camera work...well, okay it is just that but its a very inventive quirky independent flick with goofy characters and clever camera work.

This is a very exciting debut and shows that Nimród Antal has clear and abundant talent. Too bad his sophomore effort, Vacancy, is little more than torture porn. Ignore his unfortunately misstep and search this one out. If you have a taste for something different, this is a great pick.