Predators (2010)

PREDATORS (Blu-ray)

Release Date: November 1st, 2010
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 106 minutes

Director: Nimród Antal

Cast: Danny Trejo, Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Laurence Fishburne, Alice Braga, Derek Mears, Walton Goggins, Brian Steele, Carey Jones, Oleg Taktarov, Louis Ozawa Changchien

The eagerly awaited Predators Blu-ray release is finally unleashed today and comes packed with special features such as deleted scenes, featurettes, motion comics and plenty more to keep fans occupied until another sequel! Perhaps it’s enough time for Rodriguez to secure cameos for Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Michael Harrigan (Danny Glover) from the previous movies; both were originally intended to appear in this one.

The story follows Royce (Brody) who is stranded on an alien planet with 7 other cold-blooded killers and a disgraced physician (Grace). Their training, knowledge and desire to survive is no match for the Predators who are hunting them for sport. Royce is an aloof and reluctant leader who looks out for himself, but he soon learns that in order to fight the monsters, he must find his humanity, something he finds difficult since he also considers himself something of a monster too. Making their way across the terrain with the aim of commandeering one of the Predators’ ships to make it back to Earth, they will learn that having a common enemy doesn’t always make them your friend!

As far the story goes, it’s nothing groundbreaking, granted that the game-reserve planet does offer a look at the Predator Wolf which the Predators use as pets to help hunt their prey, and there’s a brief look at some of the carcasses of previously hunted life forms, but this is mere eye candy and doesn’t substitute for story. It’s a standard action flick and at times the pacing is rather slow, and you’re waiting for something to happen. That being said, the musical score by John Debney enriches the film and gives it an authentic 80’s feel along with the original from 1987 which was done by Alan Silvestri. It would have been great to have that as an isolated score on this Blu-ray release, but there’s plenty on there to make up for that!

The interviews and commentaries by Robert Rodriguez give you an in-depth look at the making of the film and how the idea for it came about. For example, the idea for the plot came to Rodriguez back in 1994 while he was working on Desperado (1995) but 20th Century Fox passed on his script citing that the estimated budget would be too large, but 15 years later they revisited their decision and gave the film the go-ahead. There are also nine deleted scenes from the film which although don’t add anything dramatically extra to the story, are still a nice inclusion to a package which also includes a digital and DVD copy of the film making it excellent value and a great addition to the Blu-ray releases for Predator (1987) and Predator 2 (1990).