Brief story line
Story focused on a Yautja warrior named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi - Red, White & Brass) who after being seen as weakness to his clan, somehow arrived at the dangerous planet Genna where he aimed to kill a wild beast called Kalisk to prove his worth.
Unfortunately he lost many of his weapons and the terrain was very difficult with vicious creatures. So when Dek came across a synthetic from earth called Thia (Elle Fanning -Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, A Complete Unknown etc), he decided to cooperate with her in finding the Kalisk. Things got complicated as Thia was part of a mission in Genna that would hinder Dek's objective.
So what would happen to Dek and Thia? You could find out in this movie.
End of brief story line
I got to say that despite the many experience of seeing Predator movies, I was a bit unsure if I am going to like this one cause from what I could find out, it focused more on the predator side (the species was now referred to Yautja). However after seeing this film, I thought it was a brilliant idea of turning them as the protagonist. It was certainly refreshing to look at Dek, trying to prove he was also worthy of being a warrior.
My wife and I always root for the underdog and Dek fit that category due to his physical condition. Supported by the simple yet fascinating background story of his family made us liked him even more. Plus his chemistry with Thia was a joy to see, not to mention the addition of the small creature referred to as Bud who made us laughed a lot. In this case I had to applaud the story telling by its director Dan Tracthenberg who also directed the Predator prequel Prey and the animated anthology Predator: Killer of Killers. He was credited as the writer together with Patrick Aison. With such pedigree and praises from his previous works, no wonder this one was well received too. From what I see, it got high critical and audience rating and its box office performance was quite good.
One of the best part of this film for me was the special effects. The lifelike creatures, the realistic synthetic, the awesome weapons were all amazingly created. Add to that the wonderful sound effects which my wife and I truly enjoyed, even with standard Dolby Surround sound in the studio made it a better experience. The action was top notch and very intense. The movie was very entertaining and covered a lot of things that made us feel it to be longer than actual duration of 107 minutes. It did not have any post end credit scene, but after a very brief opening credit scene, we were shown a surprise scene no doubt to tease us for sequel.
I think the cast did great job here. In addition to the two lead cast, there were only the support of martial artist/wrestler Reuben de Jeong as Dek's father and former basket ball player Mike Homik as Dek's older brother Kwei. Btw there was a very interesting thing in the movie, i.e. the existence of Weyland-Yutani, the company that owned and created synthetics cause it is actually the company in those Alien movies and series. So does it mean this film is also to set up another crossover like in the previous two times? Let's see if it materialize cause it would certainly be really exciting.
In the end this is a very entertaining action sci-fi movie. It is definitely a worthy addition to the Predator franchise. We had a really great time seeing this in the cinema, so much so that my wife was too absorbed with it to be tempted to glance on her handphone. From the story, characters, brief humor, action, special effects and sound effects all made for a wonderful experience. So if you have not seen this one and you are fan of Predator films, better catch it soon in the theaters. Even if you have not seen any of them before, I think you would still enjoy it.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
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