Unlike many of my peers, I don't consider the original Predator an action classic... so why, you might ask, did I go see its latest sequel?
The truth is, I've been getting cinema withdrawal. With the exception of Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Orleans, which ran for about five minutes a couple of months ago and I missed because I was on holiday, there hasn't been one film I've remotely wanted to see at the pictures since Four Lions... and that was two months ago. I can't remember the last time I went two months without wanting to go the movies - what a truly dire celluloid summer it's been - what the hell is Hollywood playing at?
Anyway, in preparation for Chris Nolan's Inception, which by now we've probably built up far too much because there's so little else to look forward to, I was finally persuaded to venture back to the local multi-fleapit for Robert Rodriguez's latest reinvention. I kinda wish I hadn't bothered.
Predators isn't so much a bad film as a relentlessly dull one. It does nothing you haven't seen a hundred times before in this kind of movie, and it does so with very little imagination. The original Arnie vehicle just about worked because it offered a certain element of surprise. But once you know that the Predator is the ultimate hunting/killing machine, what else is there to discover? This time there's a bunch of them and some are even more predatory than we've ever seen before? Big deal.
The cast try their best. Adrien Brody is actually not half-bad filling Arnie's shoes, despite the fact that he could happily climb into one of Arnie's shoes and sail it to China. That crumply-faced Mexican-looking bloke who appears in all Rodriguez's films shows up and snarls a bit. Topher Grace is even more slimy than he was in Spider-Man 3. And then there's Walton Goggins...
We were watching Justified the other week (I think Louise has a thing for Timothy Elephant) and when they let Walton Goggins out of jail, and I cheered, Louise turned to me and said, "you love him, don't you?" I couldn't deny it. He was the best thing in The Shield, the best thing in Justified, and now he's the best thing in Predators. When it comes to being an utter sleazeball, Walton Goggins can do no wrong.
The same can't be said of Laurence Fishburne who brings so much ham to his cameo, one of the predators actually chokes to death on him. Which is a blessing for everybody.
