Predators

Predators opens with a bang. Or, more accurately, a whoosh. Our hero (Adrien Brody) wakes to find himself plummeting through the air towards the ground. A parachute opens and deposits him in an unfamiliar land along with an assorted bunch of warriors and killers who have had the same rude awakening. As the long delayed sequel to Predator, the film strips what was already the leanest of the classic 1980s action flicks back to the bone. It has less a plot than a predicament.

The cast have all the back-story of a deck of Top Trumps. The only question is how – and in what order – they will die. Avoiding wall-to-wall CGI, Predators uses real forest locations, real stunts, and real men-in-rubber-suits to return a steely simplicity to the modern action movie. Brody is surprisingly effective as a Hemingway-quoting mercenary whose aquiline profile and preferred weapon rewrites the old saying: Big nose… big knife. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]