Primal 4K 2019 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Hunter and fur trapper Frank Walsh trades in rare animals. He recently caught a white jaguar in the rain forests of Brazil and now expects to sell it to a zoo for a handsome sum of money. But in addition to Frank and his live cargo, on board the ship bound for America is a dangerous murderer who must stand trial and who, for medical reasons, cannot be transported on an airplane. On the way, the criminal escapes and releases not only monkeys and poisonous snakes, but also an aggressive jaguar.

Review 4K Movie

"Primal" begins the way every late Nicolas Cage movie should begin: our star is sitting in a tree somewhere in the Brazilian jungle, smoking a cigar and boasting a stylish beard. Cage plays Frank Walsh, the poacher who captures the legendary white jaguar nicknamed "Ghost Cat." He has an order to deliver to a client, except that the transport ship is hijacked by escaped convict Richard Loeffler, merrily dealing with the convoy, crew and some overstaying CIA agents. All in all, Cage feels right at home.

The best thing that "Primal" boasts (aside from the impressive poster) is this very premise, which harkens back to the glory days of '90s action. The beautiful time when B-movie directors were impressed by "Air Jail" or "Under Siege" clearly influenced "Primal"-it was an easy film to imagine in that era. The main character came out as if from those times - "Humphrey Bogart on overdrive" hardly fits the first association with an action movie hero now, but it certainly fits the role of a wrinkled and unshaven Nicolas Cage well.

Much of the plot is a lifeless game of cat-and-mouse (where there is an escaped criminal and a jaguar!). The crew made the controversial decision to shoot the film on an actual cargo ship. Because of this, everything is covered in some sort of nefarious yellow filter. That kind of thing really hits the atmosphere hard. Given that most of the movie consists of people yelling at each other, moving from one room to another, the verisimilitude is not the best choice. The overly bland and choppy action leads to the most exciting part of the movie, suddenly, being the one where the villain decides not to fight anyone.

The quiet moments are as chaotic as the action. The actors and their characters are introduced into the story with no main purpose. Famke Janssen plays a romantic interest, a military doctor, the plot twist unravels at once, and the child has only one goal: to be rescued by the brave Nicholas.

"Primal" could have won at the expense of conceptual choices, but the budget intervened. Exotic animals enliven a couple of passing scenes, but these short episodes seem disappointing against the rest of the film. For example, Frank has a parrot, but it plays no special role. As for the ghost jaguar, it is also limited: there are a couple of short and spectacular scenes with a cat and yet the appearance of the animal, as if it had come out of a Playstation 2 game, spoils the whole impression.

The film, set almost entirely on a cargo ship, is another embarrassing entry in Nicolas Cage's filmography, though it can evoke nostalgia for the crazy action films of the '90s. You can see from Cage himself how each new scene solves one financial problem or another for the once-prominent actor. This time, our "wedding general" climbed into a symbiosis of "Under Siege" and "Snake Flying," without the budget of the former and the comedic inserts of the latter. Well, when hiring Cage, one hopes he'll be more interesting on screen than on paper, but in "Primal," despite the increased quality compared to Nicholas' other projects in 2019 ("Old Accounts," "The Cocaine Baron," "The Killing Chain"), the actor was not in the mood: poisonous snakes, an annoying parrot and computer-drawn monkeys are suddenly more interesting than the prodigal son of the Coppola dynasty.