A big-game hunter for zoos who has booked passage on a Greek shipping freighter with a fresh haul of exotic and deadly animals from the Amazon, including a rare white Jaguar - along with a politica...
Guess who’s back? Back again for a quick buck. Cage is back. Don’t tell a friend. “Primal”, directed by Nick Powell, features Cage Rage striking back with a vengeance in a schlocky mishmash that, no matter how great of an outburst Nicolas Cage makes about his “cat”, can’t be saved from its low budget, general lethargy, and apparent lack of craft.
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The film follows a hunter who’s expecting a big payday after bagging a priceless white jaguar for a zoo. But the ship bearing his precious cargo has another predator on board, a political assassin facing extradition to America. When the prisoner manages to break free and unleashes the hunter’s animals on the ship’s crew, the hunter must utilize his expert skills to capture the dangerous killer.
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The film’s narrative almost sounds like an action B-movie straight out of the 80s, complete with a insanely wacky, psychopathic antagonist and concepts that sound like they were thought up with the help of substances. Unfortunately, the film’s script is too threadbare to conjure any sort of cheesy charm, and director Nick Powell manages to find a way to sap the suspense out of every scene. The film’s story immediately devolves into a lifeless game of cat-and-mouse-and-jaguar, as the villain wreaks havoc around the ship while the rest of the forgettable cast stands around and argue at each other about what to do next. Despite Powell’s background in stunts, the action sequences are so bland and choppy that you’d desperately wish there’d be less of it.
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Nicolas Cage exudes his best “Humphrey Bogart” impersonation with sweat on his brow, a stogie in his mouth, and a haughty putdown for anybody who makes eye contact with him, as he continues snowballing down the B-movie mountain with another “Cage performance”. His character is the barebones action protagonist that’s sometimes genuinely obnoxious, and not in a charmingly oily sort of way.
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Face it tiger, “Primal” is trash and not the good kind. Nicolas Cage’s character in the film perfectly describes the experience of watching this sluggish programmatic action slop, “I just spent 10 months in the jungle, and this all smells like cat s**t to me.” The cheesiness potential of the outlandish plot is stranded back at port, as Nicolas Cage coarsely swaggers about like a dollar store hero, drinking every ounce of the cheap scenery, while befriending a parrot and a piss-poor CGI jaguar. Hopefully the paycheck Cage made for this film covered his $150 million dinosaur skull he purchased. *look it up*
