Predators

Six years ago, Nimród Antal broke into the international film world with Kontroll, a moral allegory about Budapest subway cops.  With Predators, Antal proves that he’s no niche director.  Not only can he deliver food for thought with a film like Kontroll, he can serve up the popcorn with an action blockbuster that’s the best Predator movie since the original Predator, made back in 1987.

In Predators, a group of military and criminal toughs (including obvious choices like Danny Trejo and surprising ones like Alice Braga, Adrien Brody, and Topher Grace) awaken to find themselves trapped in an alien world.  They’re in a Predator game preserve, and we in the audience strap ourselves in for another take on The Most Dangerous Prey.  This one delivers its share of gunfights, ‘splosions, courage, and cowardice, and it does so with élan.

First, it gets all the action movie stuff right.  The set pieces pop and the choreography makes sense.  We understand who (or what) is chasing whom (or what) where, and why.  You may not think this matters, but try sitting through The Expendables and trying to stay engaged while you have no idea what’s actually going on during the climactic battle.

Second, real actors play the action heroes.  When a director tells Adrien Brody to look mean, or angry, or hurt, or haunted, or whatever, he can actually do it.  The same goes for, oh, Lawrence Fishburne and the aforementioned Braga and Grace.

Third, it’s just plain fun.  It begins with a guy falling through the air, his pulse racing and the wind howling in his ears as he curses at his parachute to open before he runs out of sky, and it doesn’t slow down.  Sure, it takes moments to let us enjoy things like really enormous alien derelicts and  the spectacle of a yakuza dueling a predator in a field of windblown grass.  But it does so with its eye on the clock, its foot on the gas pedal, and a crazy gleam in its eye.

By the time the credits rolled, I had a gleam in mine.  Predators is the best action film I’ve seen in some time.  I can’t wait to see which genre Antal takes on next.

Redbelt

David Mamet´s REDBELT does all the things it sets out to do. Thanks, in part, to outstanding performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer, it also manages to be one fine, entertaining film.

REDBELT is about the owner of a struggling judo studio (Ejiofor), long on honor and short on cash. Mortimer´s a profoundly wounded attorney who enters the studio by happenstance, but who sets in motion a potentially disastrous chain of events. Further on, when Ejiofor rescues a movie star (Tim Allen) from a bar fight, another chain of events, potentially wonderful, starts to roll.

We´ll see what happens.

What´s really interesting here is Ejiofor´s character, a guy whose profound commitment to doing the right thing makes for an unexpected (potentially) tragic flaw. Here´s a guy who plays by the rules when nobody else does, and we expect things to work out for him. But when they don´t, how much will he bend, how much of his honor is he willing to expend, to try and set things right?

Add Mortimer, whose supporting character desperately needs Ejiofor to do the right things, and we´re in for a character study of a good man whose circumstances both require him to be impossibly good and make that goodness impossible.

Combine this interesting story with Mamet´s dialogue (for which I´m a sucker), and you have an interesting, engaging, satisfying film. REDBELT crashed at the box office, but here´s hoping that it finds new life on DVD.

(Fun fact: I´m writing this in Sao Paolo, the hometown of Alice Braga, who plays Ejiofor´s wife in the film. Don´t ask me why I know these things.)