Primitive War

It may have special effects FAR better than they have any right to be for 90% of the film, but make no mistake, PRIMITIVE WAR is still a rip roaring, goofy, bloody dino B-movie.

Some of the dialogue is just stupid (when you can hear it in one of the worst sound mixes I've ever heard in a modern film), Jeremy Piven overacts like he's in a modern opera and the whole damn thing is at least a half hour too long.

BUT, the dinosaurs and photography are astonishingly good for 90 minutes of so before the finale seems to stretch the budget beyond its limits.

It's 1968 in Vietnam. You'll know this thanks to plenty of title cards reminding you and a terrific soundtrack of sixties rock classics that plunk you right into the lush green,humid jungles of Vietnam.

Seriously, the scale and effectiveness of the set up is kind of jaw dropping for the budget. Swarms of helicopters soar overhead and massive military options loom. Luke Sparke pretty much threw the entire film on his back, said screw you to the major studios, wrote, directed, produced and edited the film. I admire his execution in several of those roles and his sheer guts creating this film on his own.

His story is an 80's style Rambo/Chuck Norris genre action flick depicting the Vulture Squad, led by Baker (great to see Ryan Kwanten from "True Blood" in fine form) with a ragtag bunch of grunts, including a sniper named Logan (Aaron Glenane) who has one hell of an internal dialogue that seems to be slipping to the surface and Leon (Carlos Sanson Jr). Their commander is Colonel Jericho, played by Piven in a performance so over-the-top that I can only assume he thought this was an "Airplane" style comedy and he was going to go big. VERY BIG. He yells, he chews cigars, he drops 100 F-bombs, sweats and yells some more. It's pretty embarrassing. He reminds me of Jon Lovitz's Master Thespian dropped into a war flick.

Our squad heads deep into a secluded Vietnam valley where they immediately meet up with some klller dinosaurs. These dinos aren't PG13, Jurassic Park style predators. They bite into you and pull your intestines out like so much link sausage. The dinos look fantastic and come in a lot of varieties, many are far more historically accurate than their Spielberg counterparts. Check out the feathers on those raptors.

I was surprised again and again by how well Sparke executes the big dino action set pieces. He knows that there is a huge audience out there to blend an R-rated dino flick with a "Predator" style guys movie where you lose track of the thousands of spent shells flying through the smoke, jungle fog, blood and guts.

There are some killer scenes here.

But when the action stops, Sparke maybe could have used some assistance in the editing room for some of the detours.

Tricia Helfer (Number 6 in "Battlestar Gallactica") seems miscast as a Russian scientist caught in the middle of the mad experiments that have brought these massive creates through a wormhole from 65 million years ago to 1968.

Jeremy Lindsay Taylor fares far better as General Borodin, the crazy, power hungry Ruskie determined to finish his experiment, which seems to be dinosaurs taking over the world. I'm not sure how that ties in with East/West relations or the civil discourse of the late Sixties, but what the hell, let's roll with it.

Sparke does so much with his budget that it's impossible not to admire what he's accomplished. But that tank of goodwill begins to run a bit dry by the final act, after the film has diverted too many times off road to maintain its suspense.

There are a couple of impressive T Rex's that look fantastic and an absolute herd of voracious Raptors after our Vulture Squad, but the film loses steam before recovering for that rousing finale featuring them both.

Frederik Wiedmann (Star Trek: Picard) elevates the film with a rousing music score that's ten times better than anything in "Supergirl"s score on 1/20th the budget.

If I was rating the dinosaurs and the action scenes alone, the film would soar to a B.

But the final, almost unfinished looking scenes with those raptors in the tunnel and a couple tank fulls of bad dialogue drag the film to a final grade of a C.

With a half hour of padding trimmed and a final CGI tweak, this could have been something kind of special. Weird but clever.

There are some excellent scenes here with "Fortunate Son" pounding on the soundtrack and our squad taking on dinos with relentless bravery and firepower. In those moments, this thing ROCKS.

But as it sits, PRIMITIVE WAR falls back into its B-movie roots harder than a T-Rex falling with a jungle shaking thud.

An admirable effort from Sparke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixXxdWY6d68