Primal ★★ ½ ☆☆ | Movie Review

Synopsis


Frank's caught wildlife in the Brazilian jungle incl. a 400 lbs. white jaguar. He ships it on the same ship as an arrested assassin. The assassin breaks free and frees the animals.

Directed by Nick Powell.
Written by Richard Leder.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Famke Janssen and Kevin Durand.
Available to buy or rent now.


Review


When will I learn? Do not watch big star films you've never heard of before I see them on DVD.

A big game hunter ends up transporting his catch on a ship with a team of military personnel that are transporting an assassin back to the US under the radar. All it takes is one wrong step for the ship to be filled with danger as everyone is being stalked by killers, both animal and human.

I nearly lobbed this DVD out my window after the first scene with the CGI kitty cat, it was truly abysmal. Thankfully at some point I stopped noticing fairly quickly.

Kevin Durand plays our assassin-in-transit and he's always a pretty good bet for a bad guy. Even in this he has a great presence. Next we have Famke Janssen, I couldn't honestly tell you how long it's been since I saw her in something. This wasn't a great character though, and apart from one or two scenes I had forgotten she was even in this film when I scrolled through the cast list. It's not entirely to do with the acting, which did feel a little lacklustre, the character didn't have a lot of punch and wasn't what you know she's capable of.

There's no denying that this is below my usual Cage favourites. It's pretty low on the Cage Rage ranking, but it's still a Nicolas Cage film and as with shark films that means there's an automatic pass. It would have to do something horrendous for me to outright hate it.

There's logic of some description in Primal but it's still a distinctly average film. I can forgive the bad CGI, but a poor script and average production quality across the board mean I'm regretting paying actual money for it. The idea for the story feels like someone used a story generator to get different plot points, even so, there was potential in it but I was rather sad it wasn't a better experience.

What you should do


I wouldn't advise you to pay real money for this, I paid £7.99 and that was way too much, up to £2 is probably reasonable. You could probably watch many of his films that are already streaming and get a better experience though.

Movie thing you wish you could take home


There's nothing I could take from this film that would make up for the £7.99 I spent on it.

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