By Simon Thompson
Director/ co-writer Luke Sparke’s Primitive War is a bombastic, lovably unpretentious, horror-action movie hybrid which is less Michael Crichton and more Michael Bay. Primitive War is an old school 80s-90s style high concept blockbuster that, in a good way, feels completely out of place with the blockbusters of the 2010s-2020s. While it does have a few discernible flaws, there is still a tonne of good old fashioned cheesy fun to be had with it, something from which similar movies made for five times (naming no names cough…Jurassic World cough…) the budget now could really learn a trick or two.
Set during the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, Primitive War follows an American military reconnaissance unit led by Sergeant Baker (Ryan Kwanten), whose team are brought in by Colonel Amadeus Jericho ( Jeremy Piven) to investigate a fatal attack on a Green Beret platoon in a remote part of the jungle. To cut a long story short, it turns out that, in a twist of B-movie logic (which I’m not going to spoil specifically in case anyone reading this is curious about watching the movie themselves), there are somehow dinosaurs roaming the Vietnamese jungle, treating both the American army and the Viet Cong as an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Starting with the positives, for a roughly $7,000,000 budget the dinosaurs, the action scenes in general, and the sets are all top notch especially given that Sparke isn’t directing this movie with a blank cheque. Wade Muller’s cinematography is crisp and clear, with the mixture of wide shots for the jungle exterior, and tighter and intimate angles for most of the interior scenes and the numerous dinosaur attacks, making a nice study in opposites.
The flaws however, are unfortunately in two key areas – the pacing and the writing. At nearly two hours and twenty minutes, the narrative could have shaved about half an hour off and been a much tighter viewing experience overall for, sadly, this is a movie bogged down by variations of the same scenes used to establish the characters in the first act, massively padding out the majority of the second to a tiresome extent.
The script, by Sparke and Ethan Pettus, isn’t exactly going to give Apocalypse Now or Platoon a run for their money. Most of the characters apart from Baker and Jericho are relatively one note, and although there is some fun to be had in seeing how the recon team act together as a group, unlike the characters in The Thing or Jurassic Park, when you remove them from the ensemble they aren’t the most three dimensional characters in the world. The narrative choice which really holds the movie back, however, is the character of Sofia (Tricia Helfer) a moose and squirrel accented Soviet Palaeologist whose main function is to spout exposition and be a love interest for Sergeant Baker.
Except for Jeremy Piven having a blast as the absolute bastard Jericho, the cast aren’t the strongest actors in the world and when coupled with some pretty cheesy dialogue don’t quite have the requisite Bruce Campbell pizzazz or Rutger Hauer gravitas to pull it off. To conclude, Primitive War is a solid kill-some-time-on-a plane-movie with very little rewatchability. While technically very well made, its direction and effects aren’t enough to overcome its flaws.
Primitive War is available now in cinemas.
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