What sounds like a can’t miss idea for an action movie — an armed criminal vs. Nicolas Cage on a boat loaded with killer animals — never materializes in this particular film.
Oh, Nicolas Cage. I wish you didn’t have to star in so many crappy movies just to pay off your tax debts. Occasionally, you pick winners like Mandy and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Most of the time, though, you pick (or have to do) movies like Primal.
Primal stars Cage as Frank Walsh, a big-game hunter who has scored the live catch of a lifetime: a rare ghost-white jaguar. Planning to sell it for big bucks, Walsh has booked passage for himself, the jaguar, and a bevy of other animals on a freighter bound for Puerto Rico. Unfortunately for him, the U.S. government has also paid for some space on the boat to transport Richard Loffler, a recently captured criminal (Kevin Durand.)
Loffler is accompanied by a cadre of guards, a U.S. Government attorney (Michael Imperioli), and a Navy Medical Officer (Famke Janssen.) Loffler is considered highly dangerous but also has a medical condition which prevents him from flying back to the U.S. The plan is to keep him shackled in a cage below deck until the ship reaches port. Of course, with all those armed guards keeping watch over him, nothing could go wrong, right? Wrong.
In a move that should shock no one, Loffler escapes and begins releasing Walsh’s animals, including the jaguar. What sounds like a can’t miss idea for an action movie — an armed criminal vs. Nicolas Cage on a boat loaded with killer animals — never materializes in this particular film. Not even close.
Nick Powell, who has an impressive resume as a stuntman but only two credits as a director, takes a lackluster script by Richard Leder and does what he can with it. There are a few passable action scenes. However, most of the film consists of characters moving from place to place on the ship and shouting at each other over walkie talkies (and, occasionally, in person.) It doesn’t help that every interesting idea that the script can muster is telegraphed by obvious foreshadowing.
Nicolas Cage’s Walsh is unusually subdued compared to Kevin Durand’s hammy Loffler. Famke Janssen, who is probably best known as Jean Grey in the X-Men films, is largely wasted in a thankless role. (And she’s nearly unrecognizable thanks to what I’m guessing is plastic surgery.) The movie even fumbles something as cool as a ghost jaguar thanks to shoddy CGI modeling.
Primal is a perfect example of a clever idea turned into a lousy film.
1.5 out of 5.0 stars
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