I wasn’t aware of Primitive War until a friend recommended looking up the trailer some time ago, and indeed it looked promising and actually kinda cool, like an actual effort and not just the usual low budget dinosaur drivel that we get nowadays.
I mean, if going for the Vietnam route worked for King Kong, it can work for a dinosaur film as well, why not? It’s at least something to shake up the formula.
And it also released earlier this year, so i didn’t have to dust this off from the crypt or something.
in 1968, during the Vietnam war, a Green Beret platoon goes missing during an operation, so a search & rescue team, named Vulture Squad, is tasked with a recon mission to locate the missing platoon, only for them to be attacked by dinosaurs.
It’s actually based on a novel of the same name by Ethan Pethus, also involved in co-writing the script with director Luke Spark, and while they tried to be picked up by a big Hollywood many times, they were apparently rejected every time due to the pitch being “too similar to the Jurassic World franchise”… which is bullshit, as in most likely no big studio wanted to potentially rile up Universal or Amblin Entertaiment lawyers.
So they decided to do it themselves, with a 7 million budget, and it did release in cinemas in its country of origin, Australia, with some limited theathrical screening in the US, UK and Ireland.
I’m kinda flabbergasted because this is what an Asylum joint would publicize itself as, “Platoon crossed with Jurassic Park”, only to find out it’s more like like “Deadly Prey meets Lou Petrillo’s Carnosaur”, that you have been bait n switched once again and David Michael Latt is laughing at his office desk, aware that he just did it again, except these people actually did it and committed instead of using the occasion to crank out a 20 bucks budgeted farce in their backyards.
Sure, the idea is kinda stupid but also potentially quite fun, plus not one i’ve heard done before, and boy if dinosaur films need something else nowadays to stand out, so why not, “Vietnam War-O-Sauruses” it is, it’s something different from dino cheapies about battle royales and-or sci-fi.
And you can tell they committed to their vision already from the runtime, it’s a 2 hours long film, but it’s far from a slog, a lot of stuff happens, as dinosaurs aren’t the only danger down in the Vietnamese jungles.
Speaking of which, this is not a film that wants to stand out from the typical mold of Vietnam war films, it does start off in earnest with Fortunate Son, which is what would pass for parody material at this point, the characters do fit perfectly the war movie stereotype bingo (the young gun, the religious type, the smartass with glasses, the funny black guy talking pseudo-jive, etc.) but they don’t come off as grating or overly stock, after all, as they do get more characterization and depth than expected, even if we do have them act as you would expect for a war film.
At least the americans soldiers, the other foreign presence there are pretty stock military villains, and the accents are kinda laughable, as some of the cast is a bit too American to sell the vibe, though acting is overall quite decent, and there are some recognizable faces in it, like Jeremy Piven (Entourage, Serendipity), Ryan Kwanten (True Blood, Dead Silence), Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica, Lucifer) or Nick Wechsler (Roswell, Revenge).
The plot does go into b-movie territory, as we dwelve into the how and why there are dinosaurs in a jungle valley in Vietnam, which isn’t quite what you might expect, but becomes very typical Millennium era Godzilla stuff, that’s about as much as i will say about that.
but then again, the Jurassic World movies are B-movies as well, so it’s kinda patronizing to use the term to imply it’s “lower class scum” because they don’t have trillions of budget to waste on terrible ,Asylum-level scripts like the Jurassic World series (mostly) did.
Heck, it should be humiliating since this indipendent film made with 7 millions only does miracles in terms of the dinosaur effects, the practical effects (especially the gore) not so much but they’re passable, especially considering the quality of the dinosaur CG (and the variety of dinosaurs shown in the film) its easier to gloss over it, plus it’s always good to have some some artisanal cheap-ish gore than cheap red CG rotten tomato splooge just a tiny fragment of the frame.
Sound design could be better, as the snap sound effect for the T-Rex sounds kinda silly and oddly “plasticy”, but i am being very nitpicky, i’ll admit.
That said, you can tell they had to make do with the budget limitations in regards to some plot beats and the numbers of location, but overall i do think it’s fairly good, yes, it takes itself seriously, which might sound bad on paper since the premise is absurd, but execution is strong and it’s better as it does show effort, i’ve seen too many dino films being lazy comedies that just think being facetitious itself makes for “good comedy”, so they don’t bother with any semblance of quality.
If you can’t gel with the premise of dinosaurs coming back from extinction, i dunno why are you even here reading a review for a movie literally about american soldiers fighting off dinosaurs and enemy soldiers in the Vietnam war, or dinosaurs films, in general.
Also, i don’t agree with the general consensus of Primitive War being “ a B-movie response/counterpart to Jurassic World: Dominion”, since the Jurassic World films ARE B-movies, heck, even the first Jurassic Park is a B-movie, Jaws is a B-movie, if we want to be “correct”, but Spielberg worked on them, so i’d better if we let this stupid rethoric in the past.
Primitive War is indeed a recommended one, honestly surprisingly good, definitely one of the better dinosaur films i’ve seen in recent years, one that does miracles in terms of effects with a tiny budget of 7 millions, for something that originally wanted to go the big budget studio backed route, and had the gumption to stick to its absurd idea of mixing a Vietnam war film with a dinosaur flick, one it committs to, with solid acting and plenty of entertaiment to it, and quite the spectacle too.
Wise Cafe (International) 