Ain't It Cool News
November 9, 2007
Another reader chomps down on Greg McLean's croc flick ROGUE!!!
By Red_weed
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Yay for Giant Croc movies! Especially ones starring Sam Worthington who will apparently be the new geek star (thanks to AVATAR and his rumored involvement playing the title character in GI JOE). I love Giant Croc and/or Gator movies and this one has gotten steady strong word for quite a while now. Once more, I say Yay!
Hey all, Red_weed here again with another Aussie film review. Last night a movie about a GIANT CROCODILE opened in Australia. The film is Greg McLean's (Wolf Creek) latest and Stars Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill) Michael Varten (Alias) and Sam Worthington (That dude who's gonna become famous after the new James Cameron movie comes out).
This was such an enjoyable film. It's not the most amazing film you'll see all year, but it is a lot of fun. The basic set up is this: A travel writer, Varten, is sent to the middle of nowhere to review some crocodile river cruise. The tourists and their guide, Mitchel, investigate a distress signal and end up stranded on a small island in the middle of a tidal river with a massive fucking croc, who's pissed they came to visit. There's not much more to it than that. It pretty much follows the formula of those kinds of survival horror films, but it does have a few sequences of genuine suspense and some surprises along the way.
The usual cast of expendable characters are there, there's a husband and wife, a small family with a little girl, two complete assholes, the comedy relief tourist, the cute dog and John Jarratt is back, playing a much nicer character than his turn in Wolf Creek, as a man with a different reason for being on the trip. Really, not much was done with these characters, they don't have much purpose other than to make an audience guess who the next victim is. I thought this was the films biggest weakness. They all have some nice moments at the beginning of the film, and for the most part, when the shit goes down, they seem to behave in a natural manner, none of that girl going to investigate noises in the dark by herself stuff. Ok, there were a few of these moments, but who's counting?
Oh and they love to sware, like all Aussies do. The film is rated M-15 here, which is kinda hovering between PG-13 and R, but it'd have to be R rated when released in the U.S.
What struck me most about the film was the way they captured the landscape of northern Australia. I've never seen it look so green and lush. You normally see it as a dry barren desert. It was beautifully photographed.
BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT? How is the CROC? Well, for the first half of the film, it's pretty much Jaws. It's never seen, rarely even heard. But unlike Jaws, when he comes out to play in the last half, he's full front and center. The first time the crowd got a good look at him, there were audible gasps and sheepish laughter, saying "holy shit" and "fucking hell" etc. The animators and puppeteers did a fantastic job of making this creature seem completely believable. When he's on land he's slow and sluggish, it's quite funny, but once he's in the water, you'd better not be.
The ending is the typical one on one, between the hero and the croc. I dunno if that's a spoiler or not, it's pretty obvious it's coming. It's very formulaic, but I wasn't expecting much more than that from a giant croc film, so I was pleased. It's very different tonally from Wolf Creek. It still has moments of suspense, loooong moments of suspense that just keep building up, but it's a lot more fun and light hearted. I saw it in a small crowd of about 25 people. There was no advertising for it here, I just happened to look in the paper and saw it came out and remembered I wanted to see it. But even in the small crowd the reactions were strong. Don't expect a masterpiece, just have fun with it. It's a damn fine croc movie, the best i've ever seen anyway.
© 2007 Harry Knowles
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