Predators: Review By Julian Left

In a slow and deceitful year, Predators seemed to be a ray of light in Hollywood productions, Robert Rodriguez, the creator of Desperado or Sin City seeming to be the right man for the right franchise. Wrong! ... Predators it's not a bad movie but either is a good one, not even for the hardest fans of the franchise out there. It's pity that Rodriguez fails to bring to the screen that "something" that would get me excited through a Predator movie. The movie is rushed up, chaotic, all things coming together in like the first 15-20 minutes. Royce, the mercenary played by Adrien Brody wakes up, within' an unknown conjuncture, "left" in some unknown place: an abundant forest, tall and more imposing than an amazonian jungle. Things get together as soon as possible. Royce immediately meets other people, who arrived in the jungle in similar conditions, each one of them having a different occupation and being one of the best in their fields. The story looks interesting at one point till Rodriguez gives you a big "get your mind dumbed down" and jumps from the introduction to the actual action than it goes back to like 30 minutes of talking and then right to the end of the movie. The introduction for this movie, for the story and characters is silly and thrown in without a sense, the movie loosing it's main ingredient on which the first movie built fan-bases: building of suspense. Besides that, Rodriguez even if he said this movie is not a remake, he took all the elements from the first movie and inserted them in this one. Important elements like full dialogues, full action-scenes or full ways to dispose of those Predators. On short, the story is not original, does not have a strong build-up, no climax, no suspense and no mysterious atmosphere. Everything is wrapped in tinfoil, but the gasps and holes in the script I think I could have seen them from 4 theater-halls away. Not even one character you will remember after seeing this movie, just because his actions are mostly taken from the first movie, nothing being original and not to mention that the character development it's very very VERY poor. You certainly won't remember Hanzo instead of Billy even though they are the same characters at base. The only guy who deserves being mentioned would be Noland played by Lawrence Fishburne. He is the only character that got out from the movie's pattern, Adrien Brody not being able to integrate himself in his role, creating an naive, rushed image and childish of the main character. But let's put away the weak plot and weak dialogue and let's talk about the technical execution.

I was just waiting to spread out my personal antipathy on the technical video execution of this movie.

1. You do not use shaky-cams when you you're not sure you could pull it off because you'll do just a mess. The kind of a mess Public Enemies did and people bashed it for.

2. You don't use inefficiently close-captioned shots, edited chaotic thinking that the audience will be impressed by the confusion created in the movie.

3. You don't use real time cameras on a green screen when you don't know how to do your job right. Many times in this movie you could've seen the green screen behind the actors which is pathetic for a 2010 movie.

4. You don't create bad visual effects for a Predators movie. Take a look at machine-guns in open fire and those big explosions not to mentions those "predator dogs".

Despite all these 4 important mistakes, cinematography would be one of the few positive things in this movie along with the soundtrack which was classic but poor used in many times (or it was used good but the movie lacked the suspense?).

What can I say. The movie is pretty much a mess. You throw everything on a plate and serve them hot to the audience. This is better than that wack movie AVP2 but still it can't even touch the level of AVP not to mention as a Predator movie it's the weakest.

Predators does not succeed to attract you, to create it's own personality, to be original or keep you interested of what's going on on the screen even though as pure entertainment your money won't be totally lost since there's some action that you would enjoy.

Another 2010 movie which is disappointing. See y'all on Inception.

Storyline/Dialogue: 5/10.

Acting: 6,5/10. (only for Fishburne)

Art Direction: 7,5/10.

Cinematography/Editing: 6/10.

Visual Effects: 6,5/10.

Soundtrack: 8/10.

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Overall: 6,5