Review: Primal

Big game hunter Nic Cage has just captured a rare white jaguar and needs to deliver it to a zoo in Spain for a handsome sum, along with assorted snakes, monkeys, exotic birds and such. He has commissioned a cargo ship for the voyage, but it appears there will be a few tagalongs on this voyage. These include an attorney (Michael Imperioli), a naval officer and neurologist (Famke Janssen), black ops guys (led by LaMonica Garrett). Oh, and a former special forces guy turned nutjob killer-for-hire Kevin Durand. Yeah, he’s on board too. Needless to say, the psycho and the jaguar are somehow let loose and it’s up to Cage to lead everyone else in dealing with the situation.

 

Even when his films were guaranteed theatrical releases, Nic Cage was an actor whose choices (and often, his performances) seemed eccentric. These days, the Direct-to-DVD mainstay seems to alternate between mere paycheck jobs (“Seeking Justice”, “Frozen Ground”, “Tokarev”, “Trespass”, “Dying of the Light”, “The Humanity Bureau”) or projects that tickle his oddball fancy (the enjoyably trashy “Drive Angry”, the not-bad “Season of the Witch”, the very bad “Mandy” and “Dog Eat Dog”). At whatever stage though, I’ve rarely been onside with the guy anyway. Yes, he deserved the Oscar for “Leaving Las Vegas”. Yes, I enjoyed “Con Air” a whole heck of a lot. “Lord of War” was solid. “Bringing Out the Dead” was a good use of his hangdog looks too. And yes, I almost kinda liked the first “Ghost Rider” as well. But those are few and far between. This is the same guy responsible for the two worst performances I’ve ever seen from a respected actor: “Vampire’s Kiss” and the little-seen “Deadfall”, as well as off-putting self-indulgent work in the likes of “Valley Girl”, “Peggy Sue Got Married”, “Snake Eyes”, “Face/Off”, “Kiss of Death”, “Wild at Heart”, “Adaptation”, “Raising Arizona”…the list goes on. So when I heard that Cage was making a film called “Primal” where he played a big game hunter on a boat full of wild animals, I firstly laughed my arse off. Of course I did. It sounded awful. It also sounded possibly enjoyably awful, though. And that surprised me, because I don’t normally get enjoyment out of Cage’s more bizarro, gonzo works let alone his more mainstream films like the dreadfully overrated, over-stylised “Face/Off”. So you’re probably thinking Cage once again disappointed me by either churning out another cheapo direct-to-DVD effort that the actor sleepwalks his way through, or one of his self-indulgent wannabe cult-y wankfests, right? Nope, I actually rather enjoyed this 2019 film from director Nick Powell (a long-time stunt co-ordinator) and screenwriter Richard Leder (an array of TV movie credits to his name). Sure, it’s far too low-budget to fully come through on its schlocky premise, and sure the wild animals on a boat aspect is probably the least successful part of the film. I still somehow managed to get enough enjoyment out of this direct-to-DVD Cage flick to give it a mild recommendation. Hell, I even rather liked Cage’s performance in something for the first time since about 1995. What the actual fuck is going on? Has the world gone mad? Have I gone mad?

 

The chief reason this movie entertained me has nothing to do with Cage or the wild animals. It’s the highly enjoyable lunatic turn by reliable character actor Kevin Durand. That’ll upset some people who came in solely for the Cage vs. animals aspect, but I was too busy enjoying Durand’s hilarious John Malkovich in “Con Air” meets Hannibal Lecter routine. Cage is actually fun too, though. Yep, Nic Cage and fun in the same sentence from me. Overweight, smoking a cigar and looking like absolute shit when we first meet him, Cage is amusingly crummy at the outset. His most enjoyable performance in years, he manages to be hammy in the Saturday matinee hero sense, rather than giving a mannered, self-indulgent wannabe Timothy Carey performance like he normally would in something silly like this. If there’s anything

 

I didn’t warm to here, it's surprisingly Famke Janssen, whom I normally really like. Unfortunately, the Botox has entirely frozen her face to such a distracting degree that not only can you not focus on anything else, it renders her performance completely constipated. She’s deserves better than to be in something like this, but she’s also been a helluva lot better in films other than this. It's quite sad to see, actually. As for the animals, the less dangerous ones might be real I suppose (good enough that I can’t tell, at least), but the white jaguar is clearly computer generated. Oh I get it. They weren’t about to let a real jaguar loose on set were they? Unfortunately, it’s like I always say: If you can’t afford the good stuff, either use practical FX/real animals…or use it sparingly and preferably in night-time shots. Or don’t do it at all, scrap the project entirely and make something easier. The jaguar doesn’t exactly look terrible here…but that’s almost entirely because the director shoots it at a distance and mostly in the dark. In that regard, it’s just about…passable.

 

Look, to be honest this film certainly could’ve been better. However, it would’ve needed a bigger budget for that, so as to give us more animals more of the time. As is, it kept me engaged just enough to come away from it rather amused actually. It’s a bit formulaic and predictable, sure. Compare it to a lot of the other shit Cage has churned out in his career though, and it looks an awful lot better. Fairly cheap genre film doesn’t have the budget nor filmmaker to see its hunter vs. wild animals on a boat premise really flourish. So they don’t really have all that many animals on board at all, let alone feature them in action much. That will upset some people, and I was a bit miffed too, I can’t deny that. However, when combined with the killer-on-the-loose plot, enough of each plotline works just well enough to add up to a rather watchable whole. Cage is surprisingly amusing, Kevin Durand reliably creepy. Set your expectations at about “Snakes on a Plane” level (so long as you agree with me that it was very watchable schlock, and nothing more), as this is a mild recommendation. I was expecting so much worse. Perhaps that’s part of the reason, I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t shit.

 

Rating: B-