Stumbling Out of the Gates
In the film, Dominic Purcell of Prison Break fame plays a big time news reporter who nearly gets fired for reporting a story based on bad information. His boss instead gives him a chance to go to Africa with his cameraman Orlando Jones (who is hard to take serious since his days on Mad TV), and Aviva Masters played by Brooke Langton. In one of the many silly parts of this movie, Dominic and Orlando’s characters must not only report on this massive crocodile that’s killed dozens upon dozens, they must also capture it. Not only that, but there is a terrible warlord, named “Little Gustave” that is wrecking havoc on the locals, etc. It’s a tired, uninteresting premise.
Obviously the real draw to a movie like this is the big crocodile and the mayhem he causes. At no point did I ever really feel any sense of fear or intensity from this movie, it came across as flat as a cardboard box. Gustave, the croc, wasn’t very scary or even that awesome looking. The CG effects are okay at best but like a lot of these types of movies, it’s hard to make such a creature very believable or scary. Certainly there are a lot of folks out there that like this type of horror movie but I’m not really one of them.
Presentation
So while the film is forgettable, the video and audio quality are impressive. The technical quality of the video is very good boasting rich, vibrant colors and some really gorgeous environments. Close-up shots of the characters and the wide range of lighting in the movie holds up very well with little to no qualms to mention. Likewise for the audio; the effects are powerful yet also subtle when they need to be. The roars of Gustave are bold and nicely done. Calmer moments in the movie usually right before something crazy happens, sounded good too. Not a bad job at all here.
As far as extras, there aren’t many and none that really have any replay value. You have a commentary track with the Director Michael Katleman and Visual Effects Supervisor Paul Linden; they provide some interesting details about the real story as well as some fairly interesting tidbits about the film. There are three deleted scenes that were removed for very understandable reasons since they wouldn’t have improved the film at all. They total about four minutes and have commentary from both Katleman and Linden. The last extra is foolishly named a “Croc-umentary” – yeah. Anyway it’s a nine minute piece on making of and such that’s maybe worth a quick run one time.
