- Noland (Laurence Fishburne, right) reveals to Royce (Adrien Brody) some of the secrets of living on an alien world – and amidst alien Predators.
You don’t to gory sci-fi movies expecting much gay content. Odd, really, considering that, as with comic books, gay boys make up a sizeable portion of the sci-fi market. So as I slogged through the hundred-or-so minutes of Predators, I didn’t really expect to learn that the killer creatures who hunt man for sport were secretly involved in caring same-sex relationships. (Even if I did, it would be so like Hollywood to make the villains gay.)
Then, about an hour in, I was startled awake — and not by an alien jumping from the shadows. Laurence Fishburne turns up as a nutso survivor, someone who evaded the predators on their game-preserve planet for 10 seasons.
“Is this where you live?” one of the newcomers asks.
“No, it’s my summer home,” he snaps back. “I winter in the South of France. The schools are better and the men are so fine.” Or words to that effect.
Wh-h-hat??! Did Laurence Fishburne just out his character in a macho massacre movie? It certainly seemed so.
Ultimately, that’s hardly enough to be me to recommend a movie of no redeeming qualities. But then, if you go to something called Predators, you probably get what you deserve.
And you do. Building on the original 1987 Arnold Schwarznegger film, the predators have stolen eight vicious earthlings (among them Adrien Brody and Topher Grace) as worthy prey for their bloodsport, and as the motley assemblage of politically correct and ethnically diverse folks get picked off, it becomes a game of “who will die next.”
There are no surprises. But there are decent special effects, albeit in service to a mindless suffer timekiller. “How was it?” someone asked me. “It’s a Predator movie,” I responded.
That’s all you need to know. That, and how fine the men are in the South of France. At least according to Laurence Fishburne.
2 stars
— Arnold Wayne Jones
