PREDATORS

Seven men and one woman find themselves catapulted into a forest: they have been stunned and dropped by parachute among the vegetation, they don't know where they are or who put them there. After the initial distrust and the inevitable tensions within the group, the eight realize they are not on Earth but on a similar planet, and that someone or something is hunting them. It took 16 years to bring "Predators" – or "Predator 3", if you will – to life since, in 1994, Fox asked a young Robert Rodriguez, fresh out of "Mariachi", to write the subject of a third film to relaunch the "Predator" saga after the semi-flop of the second chapter directed by Stephen Hopkins. That subject gathered dust in the drawers of Fox studios for many years, was overshadowed by the two crossovers "Alien vs. Predator" until it found realization in 2010… obviously completely transformed by the years passed and by the screenplay of the novices Alex Litvak and Michael Finch who, at one point, seemed ready to make a remake of the original film. The source of inspiration for "Predators" is explicitly the mythical first film directed in 1987 by John McTiernan, in the sense that the setting, the type of characters, and the same narrative structure recall the original a lot. From these almost obligatory characteristics, the Hungarian director Nimrod Antal ("Vacancy"; "Blindato") builds a solid action movie rich in rhythm that will surely make fans of the alien hunters happy, but that at the same time shows some shortcomings, some of which we could have expected, others a bit unexpected. Let's start with the negative surprises. We are dealing with a product of a successful franchise that already counted – between official episodes and crossovers – four films, in which the figure of the Predator has been mythologized, flaunted, and exalted more than once, up to the status of protagonism assumed in the two "Alien vs. Predator". It is therefore easy and due to expect a "Predators" in which the alien hunters with dreadlocks make the scene. Instead, surprise, Antal and company keep the predators away from the screen for a long, too long time, creating that sense of frustration that makes you think "ok, ok, enough with Brody's big nose all over the screen, now we want the roaring Predator!". Keeping the threat hidden was a perfect expedient for McTiernan's film, in the sense that the same viewer of 1987 was dealing with a novelty and did not know what to expect until the fateful final duel where the one who seemed almost a cyborg reveals his monstrous features to an Arnold Schwarzenegger at the peak of his career. In "Predators", unleashing the hunters in the last half hour of a film that lasts 105 minutes is perhaps a wrong move. That said, when the predators enter the scene, the film takes off, showing us hunters meaner than in the past and endowed with a look among the best seen in the entire saga. And this fuels the classic "senno di poi" that does nothing but accentuate the frustration we were talking about. The shortcoming we expected concerns the cast of characters that populate the film. Knowing the saga and aware of the fact that the real star is not the human hero but the alien predator, it was easy to expect somewhat one-dimensional protagonists and in part it is so. I say in part because they managed to place an eccentric schizophrenic played by Laurence Fishburne and also an unpredictably mocking character capable of offering a decent plot twist. For the rest, there is that one-dimensionality that, however, is not a real flaw but almost a trademark capable of creating familiarity, starting from the overused stereotype of the action woman of Hispanic origin, which since "Aliens – Scontro finale" (including "Predator" and "Predator 2") is omnipresent. Good and well-exploited the idea of the hunt. The Predator is a hunter, we know for sure and in every film they remind us of it; never as this time, however, the role of the hunter and the prey, true pivot of this "Predators", is central. It seems almost that one wants to apply the logic at the base of "The Most Dangerous Game", a story by Richard Connell and a homonymous film by Ernest B.Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, according to which "the most dangerous prey is man" and precisely for this reason there is pleasure in hunting him, a sort of final test passed which the respective superiority can be declared. In this case, there are traps, baits, alien hunting dogs, strategies, alliances, betrayals… all in function of a long hunting expedition in which the roles are, obviously, constantly put into question. In the end, "Predators" is an action-packed survival horror, an adrenaline body count, and if taken exclusively for this, the film works very well. There is great care for special effects and makeup – work of the always excellent team of Berger and Nicotero – and a conscious B-movie pride that is probably to be attributed to the executive production of Robert Rodriguez. Cast of known names ranging from a muscular Adrien Brody, now dealing with characters you would never expect him to play, to the Brazilian Alice Braga ("I Am Legend"; "City of God"), from the aforementioned Laurence Fishbourne ("Matrix"; "Punto di non ritorno") to an underutilized Danny Trejo ("Machete"; "Halloween – The beginning"). If it weren't for the feeling of a recycled idea and, above all, for the inexplicable marginality of the monsters, "Predators" could have been a great film, so it remains a good film but ranks last in the ranking in the "official" saga.