Yup, it can only be...
Predators (2010).
Dir: Nimród Antal.
Cast: Sir Adrien of Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, Oleg Taktarov, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Louis Ozawa Changchien and Laurence Fishburne.
"Hmm... 5 O'clock... Bitch rapin' time."
Enjoying an afternoon kip on the sofa, beak-nosed bad ass mercenary Ross Royce (the magnificent Brody, star of some of the greatest movies of all time, oh and Splice) is woken by a cold draft down his back and is fairly surprised to find that he's no longer sitting in his conservatory listening to Radio 4 but plummeting to earth with a kiddies lunchbox strapped to his back.
Normal start to the day then.
Luckily the lunchbox contains a groovy glider cum parachute and soon enough Royce is rolling about in the mud, looking all mean and moody whilst trying to recover his dignity.
Within seconds landing tho' Royce is even more surprised (there's a lot of it about) to find himself being machine gunned by a mental Hispanic drug dealer named Cuchillo (the legend that is Danny Trejo), who also seems to have mysteriously parachuted in to this strange and exotic jungle.
Well, I say strange and exotic but it just looks as if they went down to the local park, if you look closely you can actually see the swings in the background.
Only the Brody.
Being hard nosed bastards the pair indulge in a wee bit of manly bitch slapping before being attacked (hmmm....there seems to be a pattern forming) by a brick-built Russian soldier named Nikolai (Taktarov, star of loads of stuff that I haven't seen and Bad Boys II which I have) carrying what looks like a giant hedge trimmer that spits bullets.
More manliness ensues.
All this slapping and scuffling tho', plus the smell of sweat and piss has attracted the attentions of another military type stuck in the jungle.
Enter (from behind roughly if you're that way inclined) the sexy Israeli sniper Isabelle (button nosed Braga from City of God), whose calm demeanour and smart fringe almost instantly calms the situation and soon enough the merry band are traipsing towards the petting zoo looking for other recently arrived folk.
Knowing that we're here to see some top monster vs. Brody action and not just to watch a bunch of sweaty folk walking thru' a country park it's not long before the rest of the cast are assembled, including Mombasa (Ali) a Sierra Leone bad lad, cool bare foot Yakuza Hanzo (Changchien), death row rapist Stans (Goggins) plus clumsy comedy doctor Edwin (Grace).
As each are introduced they're allowed a few minutes of swearing and of flexing their muscles in an attempt to define their characters.
All except Edwin that is who gets to fall out of a tree in a vaguely amusing Chuckle Brothers manner.
The girl, the Brody and the pill.
Being the only Oscar winner amongst the cast Royce soon takes charge, deciding that if they walk far enough in the same direction they'll find the park gates or at the very least a climbing frame to stand on so they can shout for their mums.
Everyone agrees and dutifully follows our hero past the rockery (with water feature) along to a big clearing where they're all shocked and stunned to see, not the sky but a huge toddlers drawing of some planets and stuff shoddily hung in front of them.
Are they in an alien adventure playground or are the FX team fucking with the movies budget?
There's unfortunately no time to discuss this as out of nowhere (well the bushes) some spiky headed CGI Shetland ponies appear and start to chase our heroes in a terrifying frenzy of pixelated bloodlust and computer game level tie-in madness.
Seemingly impervious to bullets (sometimes) it's down to Brody's patented five knuckle fist-fuck to render the beasts unconscious.
The good, the bad and the Brody.
Putting two and two together (then dividing by monster horsedogs before subtracting originality) Royce figures out that they been kidnapped by aliens then deposited on some kind of intergalactic game preserve to be hunted down like wild animals.
Albeit wild animals with big guns and balls of steel.
And that's just Isabelle.
From now on in it's a battle for survival as Earth's meanest mutha's take on the fanny faced ferocious Predators in a fight to the death.
Or a reheated rehash of the original with a skinny Oscar winner in the place of the pug faced Austrian oak.
Probably.
Brody of evidence.
Hired by behatted producer Robert Rodriguez (because he was cheap and because Paul WS Anderson was busy probably) to bring his boyhood dream of a halfway decent sequel to the 1987 Schwarzenegger original to the screen, Nimród (Armoured, Vacancy and Kontroll) Antal's boy's own, big(gish) budget 'B' picture is as inoffensive as it is at times annoying.
Looking like it was shot in the producers garden with Playstation quality special effects, Brody seems to be under the impression that he's in Saving Private Ryan whilst a bizarro cameo from a drunken, bloated Laurence Fishburne seems to have been edited in from a completely different draft of the script.
And if you're gonna put Danny Trejo in a movie for fucks sake don't kill him off twenty minutes in.
And then off screen.
Luckily Alice Braga pitches her performance as the hard bitch with a great arse perfectly but you know that when Topher (Venom/Eddie Brock from Spider-Man 3) Grace gives a movies best performance that you're in trouble.
Thankfully tho' before the entire thing falls apart or you start to think too much about the script, Adrien Brody takes his top off, smothers himself in mud and has a fist fight with a tall man in a rubber suit and a string vest.
It's then that it somehow makes it all seems worthwhile.
Brody and (Mrs) Doyle:
"Go on, go on, go on".
"Go on, go on, go on".
Pedestrianly directed, pantomimely acted and with special effects as rough as your mum, Predators is far better than the cinematic quagmire that is AvP (1 and 2) but never scales the testosterone and piss stained epicness of the original.
But did anyone honestly think it would be?
Bizarrely enough tho' Predators is still a must see.
And not just for the sight of Adrien Brody's serious actor persona nosediving quicker than the character of Royce in the films pre-credit sequence.
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