PRIMITIVE WAR (2025)

Studio:   Samuel Goldwyn Films
Director: Luke Sparke
Writer:   Luke Sparke
Producer: Carly Sparke, Carmel Imrie, Luke Sparke
Stars:    Ryan Kwanten, Tricia Helfer, Nick Wechsler, Aaron Glenane, Anthony Ingruber, Carlos Sanson Jr., Albert Mwangi, Adolphus Waylee, Henry Nixon, Jeremy Piven

Review Score:

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Summary:

During the Vietnam War, American soldiers unexpectedly encounter prehistoric creatures while on a classified mission involving a secret Russian weapon.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

During the Vietnam War in 1968, Colonel Jericho assigns Sergeant Baker, leader of the Vulture Squad recon team that recently returned from a successful POW recovery, to a classified mission to discover what happened to a platoon of Green Berets attacked by unknown forces. Baker’s team includes rookie radio operator Leon, unstable soldier Logan, Miller, Xavier, Eli, and Keyes.

During their search for the Green Berets, prehistoric dinosaurs unexpectedly attack Baker’s team. Baker and Leon become separated from the other five men in the conflict.

While Logan, Miller, Xavier, Eli, and Keyes survive a series of firefights against various dinosaurs, Baker and Leon escape from a Tyrannosaurus rex by jumping off a cliff into a river. Sofia, a Russian paleontologist, helps pull both men out of the water.

Sofia escorts Baker and Leon to a nearby research station for safety. Sofia explains she is the only survivor of a science team that had been working on a top-secret particle collider for Soviet General Borodin. Borodin killed everyone on the team who knew about the project, including Sofia’s husband, so she now copes with the trauma through a morphine addiction.

Baker contacts Colonel Jericho over the radio to report on the dinosaurs, the collider, and General Borodin. Seemingly surprised about the dinosaurs since he was only tasked by government agents Bishop and Ibex to recover the collider, Jericho tasks Baker with securing the device. Baker instead blackmails Jericho into sending an emergency extraction team to rescue Vulture Squad.

Keyes is wounded by sniper fire when he, Logan, Miller, Xavier, and Eli are ambushed by a squad of Borodin’s Russian soldiers being guided by Vietcong operative Con Nhen. Their firefight is interrupted by flying dinosaurs attacking from overhead.

Logan, Miller, Xavier, and Eli escort Keyes into a nearby jungle where they reunite with Baker, Leon, and Sofia. Everyone continues fighting more dinosaurs before fleeing back to the research station to treat Keyes after he’s savagely mauled.

Sofia finally reveals that General Borodin’s collider project was secretly carried out in Vietnam because he didn’t want to perform potentially dangerous experiments in their Russian homeland. Due to cutting corners, the collider accidentally opened a portal that brought prehistoric creatures into the present day. Wanting to weaponize the collider’s teleportation capabilities, Borodin abandoned the dinosaur-infested jungle to rebuild another collider in a different location. Baker concludes the new collider must be destroyed.

Dinosaurs attack the research station. Already gravely wounded, Keyes sacrifices himself by detonating a grenade to kill the creatures, allowing everyone else to escape to a boat.

Baker tells his team about the secret weapon they must destroy to prevent the end of the world. Sofia warns they can’t bomb the collider’s location because they would risk dropping bombs all over the planet through any space-time portals created. Sofia instead advises Baker to disable the device onsite.

Baker, Sofia, and the others engage in another dinosaur battle while proceeding through a jungle toward the new collider’s location. Already suicidal, Logan shoots himself dead, attracting a horde of dinosaurs and creating an escape route for everyone else.

Baker, Sofia, Leon, Xavier, Miller, and Eli arrive at the Russian compound where General Borodin’s soldiers are guarding the collider. Baker radios the location to Colonel Jericho, who instructs Baker to not attack, but to secure the device for recovery. Baker pretends to not hear the order as he reveals his plan to blow up the entire compound instead.

Baker, Sofia, Leon, Xavier, Miller, and Eli infiltrate the compound, plant explosive charges, and recruit sympathetic Russian soldiers who also want to stop General Borodin. Two Tyrannosaurus rexes suddenly attack, creating chaos in the camp. Miller dies in the ensuing commotion.

Baker, Sofia, Leon, Eli, and Xavier eventually come together in the collider control room. General Borodin interrupts with an attempt to activate the device. Baker shoots Borodin, but he vanishes during a sudden blackout. A dinosaur later kills Borodin before he can activate the collider controls.

Baker, Sofia, Leon, Eli, and Xavier are forced to flee from a horde of raptors. Eli dies during the pursuit. Baker intentionally distracts the dinosaurs, and he ultimately blows himself up with a grenade that kills the creatures, so Sofia, Leon, and Xavier can escape outside to the soldiers waiting at Colonel Jericho’s rescue choppers.

Sofia, Leon, and Xavier fight off more dinosaurs and fly away with Colonel Jericho and his men just before the detonated charges destroy the entire compound. From the helicopters, everyone sees that dinosaurs have spread out all over the valley, which inspires Jericho to smile knowingly.

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Review:

If a Vietnam War movie doesn’t include Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” on its soundtrack, is it even a Vietnam War movie? “Primitive War” features that standard staple and then some, including a soldier made mentally unstable by the horrific sights he’s seen, loudmouthed guys getting drunk during downtime, and a wet-behind-ears rookie who gets hazed because he’d rather have a chocolate bar than a men’s magazine. “Primitive War” also slips in something Charlie Sheen, Robin Williams, and Forrest Gump never encountered during their fictional tours of duty in the war-torn country: dinosaurs.

“Primitive War” stars a trio of top names from cable TV shows that hit the height of their popularity in the late 2000s. “True Blood’s” Ryan Kwanten takes most of the movie’s reins as Baker, leader of a ragtag recon crew sent on a top-secret mission to find out what happened to a platoon of mysteriously missing Green Berets. What his team finds instead are hordes of dinosaurs who’ve been brought out of the past by a secret Soviet experiment gone wrong.

As the colonel overseeing the operation from a tent the actor only leaves to briefly board a helicopter during the climax, “Entourage’s” Jeremy Piven ranks highest on this military roster, even though he has the least amount of screentime compared to anyone else. He does, however, beat out everyone for having the most awkward regional accent, with that region being somewhere south of Canada and north of Mexico. Pick any four states at random and mix them together. No matter what’s chosen, that’s what Piven sounds like whenever he barks out his anger-laden lines.

Trying, and nearly succeeding, to outdo Piven for best bad accent is “Battlestar Galactica’s” Tricia Helfer. Helfer plays a Russian paleontologist who was part of the cloak-and-dagger project that opened a prehistoric portal. It’s an interesting move for “Primitive War” to make. Instead of directly depicting the Vietcong as bad guys, the story weaves in a covert jungle operation that presents America’s classic communist enemies as villains, though dinos still do the bulk of the damage.

Even without knowing the film is adapted from Ethan Pettus’s 2017 novel “Primitive War: Opiate Undertow,” someone might suspect the existence of more material somewhere, either in earlier drafts of the script or as additional scenes left behind in the editing room. “Primitive War” stuffs in an assortment of underdeveloped secondary players whose side stories die on the vine. In the book, the Vietcong operative guiding a squad of Russian soldiers across the terrain probably had more on her plate than she does here, which is only one scene of getting yelled at and another of dying a “who was she again?” death. Some might also suspect the two men in black who aren’t wearing black only remain in the movie because they appear next to Jeremy Piven in too many of the colonel’s cutaways.

Yet no one can complain that “Primitive War” doesn’t deliver enough military-versus-dinosaurs action. On the contrary, someone could argue “Primitive War” features more of it than even the most spectacle-starved viewer can handle before feeling the bloat of boredom. The film is absolutely stuffed to the gills with gunfire, frantic chatter, explosions, digital blood bursts, and of course, creatures. Constantly cluttered with noisy chaos, the screen is a nearly nonstop sensory assault of muzzle flashes, clinking bullet casings, and adrenaline-fueled macho men screaming through it all.

Entirely rendered via CGI, there are moments when “Primitive War’s” dinosaurs rival the realism of the first “Jurassic Park” film from 1993, thanks in no small part to how often their roaring rampages are partially obscured by darkness. Other moments, like when flying dinos attack in daylight, reveal the software’s sketchiness. All in all though, while “Primitive War” may be below “Jurassic World” in terms of technical quality, it’s still far above the DTV dinosaur flicks with words like “Mega,” “Ouija,” and “-nado” in their titles.

Bottom line, if a movie’s main attraction promises creature-heavy thrills, it can’t skimp on the monsters. “Primitive War” definitely doesn’t cheat viewers in that regard, as it offers an astounding volume as well as variety of prehistoric predators, likely more than an average person might expect from a B-movie on a belt-tightened budget.

Slice out 20 or so minutes, whether that be from eliminating unnecessary characters or redundant scenes of hectic havoc, and “Primitive War” would be an easier recommendation for fans who know the difference between a film ready for primetime on a Friday night versus a matinee movie for a rainy Saturday afternoon. “Primitive War’s” particular tier of talent makes it the latter, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when you don’t mind a little looseness in your escapist entertainment.

Review Score: 65

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