But this particular ship is also, for reasons that are both complicated and largely irrelevant, transporting rogue government assassin Richard Loffler (Kevin Durand), who is being taken back to the U.S to stand trial for vaguely defined \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d (mostly killing the wrong people). Durand gives the kind of manic, scenery-chewing performance that people most expect from Cage these days, first with his Hannibal Lecter-style taunts while he\u2019s shackled inside a cage in the ship\u2019s cargo hold, and then with some standard villain monologuing after he breaks free and starts terrorizing the crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Loffler also sets all of Frank\u2019s dangerous animals loose, but despite the \u201cCage vs. jaguar\u201d hook that is being relied on to sell the movie, there isn\u2019t a whole lot of gnarly animal action. That\u2019s at least partially because the animals (especially the jaguar) are phony-looking CGI creations, who are less menacing every time they\u2019re shown. An annoying parrot who follows Frank around gets far more screen time than the jaguar, and more character development than most of the humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The supporting cast includes Famke Janssen as a doctor\/Naval lieutenant\/half-hearted love interest, and Michael Imperioli as a slimy government operative who cares more about keeping secrets than about keeping the people on the ship safe from Loffler. Janssen, in either an ill-fitting wig or a disastrous haircut, is especially wasted, stuck with wan flirtatious banter and a last-act turn into a damsel in distress. She and Cage have no chemistry, and her support of Frank\u2019s redemption arc is as perfunctory as the flirtation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But no one comes to a movie like this to see romance or personal growth. The best that a movie like Primal <\/em>can offer is some gritty, brutal action sequences, but the fights between Frank and Loffler are pretty weak, and director Nicholas Powell (a veteran stunt coordinator who previously helmed another anonymous Cage thriller, 2014\u2019s Outcast<\/em>) doesn\u2019t stage any exciting set pieces. Virtually the entire movie takes place on the ship, and most of the scenes involve characters skulking around dimly lit corridors and stairwells, jumping at loud noises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Say what you will about Cage\u2019s choice in roles (widely reported to be the result of his financial irresponsibility), but he often gives his all to even the most worthless trash, and here he does his best to make screenwriter Richard Leder\u2019s functional dialogue into something off-kilter and intriguing. Frank isn\u2019t exactly an interesting character, but Cage\u2019s performance makes him seem like he could be an interesting person, somewhere just beyond the margins of what actually happens in the movie. It\u2019s not enough to make Primal <\/em>worth watching, but it is enough to hold out hope for at least a couple of Cage\u2019s next 87 bargain-basement thrillers. C-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The one advantage of Nicolas Cage starring in approximately 87 straight-to-video movies a year for the past decade is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":12847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n1 hr., 37 min.; rated R for violence and language<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nJoin our \u00a0<\/em>mailing list<\/a>! Follow us on \u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/a>! <\/em>Write<\/a>\u00a0for us!<\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"