Suspend Your Disbelief: 6 Gaping Holes in the 'Predators' Plot Line

Who said sci-fi has to make sense?

Sci-fi action flicks aren't supposed to have airtight narratives. But Nimrod Antal's Predators goes beyond the pale, say critics. The film stars Adrien Brody, Laurence Fishburne and Alice Braga as a group of elite killers transported to a distant planet and hunted by aliens. Below, critics tally up the instances in which the film compelled them to suspend their disbelief:

• Doesn't Make Sense But That's OK, writes Kurd Lodder at MTV:

"Predators" is a B movie that knows its job, and does it. Which means, among other things, that making sense is not on its to-do list. The picture opens with a group of people falling from the sky into a jungle. What are they doing here? None of them knows. One minute each of them was sleeping, the next they were plummeting through the clouds. That's that. Where are they? The group's lone woman, Isabelle (Alice Braga), looks around suspiciously. "I've never seen this jungle," she says. "And I've seen most." Isabelle hails from Guatemala, where she no doubt saw quite a bit of jungle, but has lately been employed as a sniper by the Israeli Defense Force, whose missions are not often thought to be jungle-related. But whatever.

• The Predators Are Baffling, writes Marshall Fine at The Huffington Post: "Predators never tries to tell us too much about the brutal creatures, how they can seem so primitive and yet command obviously superior technology, or what their planet is like or anything else. They're simply a force of the universe, one hell-bent on laying waste to all other species. Except, of course, for the one Predator who lets himself be talked into joining the human cause."

• Adrien Brody Does a Decent Job, But Where'd He Get Those Abs? wonders Jeannette Catsoulis at NPR: "Brody's transition from sensitive nerd to sci-fi hero (following the recent Splice) is, along with his new abs, somewhat surprising but not entirely laughable. The increase in girth might have come with a decrease in subtlety and art-house cred, but Brody is a smart actor whose presence can elevate an otherwise unmemorable project."

• Where'd They Get All the Ammo? adds Catsoulis:  "As our small band of anti-heroes fights off digital warthogs and a crazy survivor from an earlier crop of victims (an amusingly loony Laurence Fishburne), we keep looking for the ammo truck that must surely have been dropped from the sky alongside them. They could have built a spaceship with the spent shell casings alone."

• Also Two More Things, writes Lodder: "How likely is it, for example, that the Japanese Yakuza guy (Louis Ozawa Changchien) would just happen to find a samurai sword lying around on the alien planet? (What next, we don't wonder.) And there's a wonderful moment when the exasperated Brody walks right up to one of the Predators and says, 'I want off this planet!' Then, as an afterthought, he says, 'You understand me, don't you?' As if it mattered."