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Director Paul W.S. Anderson has found his niche translating video games to the big screen. He did it with Mortal Kombat in 1995 and Resident Evil in 2002, and here he blows up a game that was itself distilled from two storied film franchises. What’s to know? Predators have long used Earth as an arena to stage their rite of passage, which is battling Aliens who’ve spawned in human hosts. Throughout human history, it seems, Predators have posed as gods and have even provided mankind with the cornerstones of civilization. So it’s been a trade-off. None of that matters now, though, as an intergalactic smackdown gets under way in a shape-shifting pyramid some 2000 feet below a polar ice cap. Billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen, who played a similarly named android in Aliens) has dispatched a team of cannon fodder to the scene to lay claim to the newly discovered phenom. Pretty soon the crackpot crew of experts is down to one: Alexa (Sanaa Lathan), the can-do mountain climber/guide who strikes a bargain with one faction to save her hide. The gore and the classic "ugly motherfucker" line issued by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original Predator are scrubbed down for the PG-13 rating. The ghoul-on-ghoul special effects do make their mark, but otherwise, in this contest, everyone’s a loser. (100 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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