Why is Adrien Brody playing a tough-as-nails mercenary in this film? He sounds like he’s channeling Christian Bail’s laughable Batman voice from “The Dark Knight,” and I don’t believe his performance for a second. Maybe the director thought it would be funny to cast an actor known for his emotionally sensitive roles as Schwarzenegger mark 2, but the audience I sat with wasn’t laughing.
I saw the original “Predator” on a tiny screen in a van driving from South Carolina to Chicago at two in the morning, and it was still a more entertaining experience. The original film was all about atmosphere, the foreboding feeling of being pursued by unseen forces, and Schwarzenegger made the film tick with his strong physical performance. All this film has to offer is a handful of boring stereotype characters wandering around in a jungle, punctuated with lame fight scenes and goofy violence.
Every time I go to the cinema I hate the concept of film franchises a little more. After watching M. Night’s newest lameness a few weeks ago, which “ended” with a “to be continued,” I realized that modern Hollywood is less interested in entertaining than it is in creating money-making serials. Never mind an absence of compelling story or proper ending, tune in next year to see what happens next! That this film has no ending isn’t as offensive as its final climax, which is a shot-for-shot rip-off of the original Predator climax. “But there are TWO PREDATORS fighting,” you may say. Yeah, just like there were two mummies in Universal’s awful fifth mummy film, “The Mummy’s Curse.” Changing the quantities of things doesn’t make a sequel original.
The one bright spot in this mess was Laurence Fishburne’s engaging performance as a crazy Predator impersonator. I wanted the film to be about him, but I guess he was just too original to headline this rip-off film.