Customer Reviews

Raptor Island

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

really the title of my review says it all.

This film depicts the delicate balance of environmental issues with a gentle hand that was lacking in the Jurassic Park series. Whereas those films settled on simply showing dinosaurs as mindless killing machines bent on destruction of the human race, Raptor Island reminds us that humans can also be mindless killing machines bent on destruction of not only their own race, but their whole world. This movie, no this FILM, goes to great lengths to really illustrate the battle between man and his environment and does so in a way that is more compelling than anything presented in Inconvenient Truth. In addition to touching on subjects of man vs. nature, the film is so bold as to also explore the battle of man vs himself. Indeed, this film goes so far as to take an in depth look at terrorism in the post 9/11 age. It does so in a way that is not sensationalist or jingoistic, but one that is brutall honest.

Why Lorenzo Lamas hasn't won an Oscar Lifetime achievement award for this movie is beyond me. Every scene he is in is riveting beyond belief. Chuck Norris does not hold a candle to Lorenzo Lamas.

The special effects are top notch. I don't understand how this has been overlooked for the past 6 years, while Avatar has garnered all sorts of critical praise. Obviously the critics are in James Cameron's pockets.

Plus, you will learn that the South Pacific Islands look strikingly similar to New Hampshire. I had absolutely no idea and I appreciate the learning experience.

I must say that I didn't have high expectations for this movie. The first red flag was that Anchor Bay distributed this movie on DVD. God bless Anchor Bay, they release (and re-release) some of the oddest and off the cuff movies out there. Now many times odd and off the cuff can also be cheesy and corny. The second red flag is this movie was made for the Sci-Fi Channel, equating it to a direct to video movie without the bad language and nudity. Yet this movie ended up being pretty good, for what it was, cheesy and corny.

With this taken into consideration, let's enter "Raptor Island". This movie made in 2004 stars Lorenzo Lamas (in every B movie in l990s and television show Renegade) and Steven Bauer (Scarface). Well the plot is very simple, even though the movie could have been ten minutes shorter. Lorenzo Lamas is leading a Special Forces team to capture Steven Bauer and crew. The latter is a terrorist who is dealing with illegal weapons (sadly he doesn't have that much screen time). Well this chase lands the terrorists and the SF team on an island, where raptors live. To add to the mix is an undercover C.I.A. agent played by Hayley DuMond (cute) and a rouge tyrannosaurus-rex. Oh and just my personal observation, none of the characters seemed too shocked that there were prehistoric creatures living on this island.

As noted prior this is a made for TV movie, so no nudity or really bad language. However that didn't bother me, this movie was pretty much non-stop action in the sense that something was always going on. As for the dialogue, I must confess that some of it made me laugh very hard. For instance, there is a scene where Lorenzo says "Blood doesn't lie". That phrase might not make much sense in this review, but the way it is delivered in the film, HILARIAOUS!!!

The raptors themselves (as well as airplanes and boats) look like they were rejects from a Disney-Pixar movie and/or taken off a bad Playstation game. In the case of "Raptor Island" very bad special effects equals very good viewing. There are many dubious and questionable situations and character flaws. Consequently if you can believe that raptors can walk around in modern times and eat people then you should check all realism at the door.

The DVD provides a crisp picture with good sound and a chapter selection. The only special feature is a preview for "The Man with the Screaming Brain" with Bruce Campbell, not a bad movie. Overall "Raptor Island" is a low budget flick that is so cheesy that it is great. This movie would be the perfect solution for a rainy afternoon. God Bless Anchor Bay and bad CGI raptors!

This is one of those movies that is so bad that it can be entertaining. It has unbelievably bad continuity, plot, acting, characters, and all that "other stuff" that makes a movie good. There are some really interesting effects and dinosaurs, but it is used so horribly that at times it seems almost cartoonish.

I will attempt to summarize the movie: special forces are given the mission of rescuing UN - never mind all of that - the good guys end up fighting the bad guys while trapped on a cold, tropical, super-radioactive island, full of dinosaurs, especially raptors, in Chinese territory.

A lot of dinosaurs get shot, how I'm not sure. Through the entire movie the audience is left wondering if they were all going to accidentally shoot themselves. The guns are used as bullet sprayers, the guns are endlessly cocked, ninety-some percent of the bullets hit anything but a dinosaur, and I don't think that one dinosaur is shot when it actually comes on the scene (they have to wait for the dinosaurs to eat someone first, or something).

In the movie, none of the characters can do these things: swim, move out of harm's way, aim a gun, use their grenades, duck or hide (or otherwise take cover when necessary), tell another character critical information (at least not when they need it), etc. The bad guy is indestructible, even though everything bad seems to happen to him (wounded, irradiated, trapped with dinosaurs, lava flows, chased by special forces, etc). The dinosaurs are pretty indestructible too, even coming back to life sometimes.

Nothing in the plot makes sense. I dare you to try to make sense out of it. Overall there is a story there that sort of comes together (which I summarized earlier). Not sure where they got all that plutonium, everything is literally more radioactive than Chernobyl. Do not look for continuity, it is always missing in critical areas. My favorite part is the cartoonish helicopter. From the inside looking out, it is always "a cloudy, stormy sea at night". This is true even if from the outside they are flying during the day, or over the island, or there are no clouds in the sky and the water is perfectly still along the shore.

The most disturbing part is that a lot of the actors are literally on drugs (obviously the person putting the helicopter scenes together was). Nearly all of the guys on the ship, including the helicopter pilot, have dilated eyes, slur their lines, waver, struggling to stand and to say their lines at the same time. Not sure, but I think that sometimes they are wearing lipstick. Also, the characters act as if they are on drugs. They make irrational decisions, forget all their training, don't notice things like dinosaurs or terrorists running around them, and more than one of them decides to become dinosaur food for no apparent reason.

Overall I would have to say that this is the most entertaining "SciFi Presents" movie that I have ever seen. These same scene settings can be seen in nearly all of their movies. Instead of Russia, Europe, or wherever, this time they are supposed to be in Chinese territory - funny how it all looks like Bulgaria. Not sure how I survived watching this movie, but I should get a medal for it or something.

Sci Fi really outdid themselves with "Raptor Island," perhaps the most formulaic dinosaur of the week movie I have ever seen. The plot is full of holes and continuity errors are abundant in this farfetched and boneheaded "trapped on an island with a ferocious predator" genre staple. The plot centers on tough naval commando Hacket (Lorenzo Lamas) attempting to rescue beautiful CIA operative Hayley DuMond (who is by fortunate coincidence the CIA's top expert on dinosaurs!) from the hands of crazed terrorist Azir (Steven Bauer) while the entire cast is being chased by some of the worst CGI dinosaurs in history. Along those lines, one of the opening credits reads "Digital Visual Effects by Unreal Productions." Now that's truth in advertising! You can't say they didn't warn you right up front.

Before you get the wrong idea, I don't hate this movie. In the right company, in fact, this can be an extremely entertaining film, albeit for all the wrong reasons. It turns out that forty years ago there was a DC-3 crash (more bogus CGI) on the island that brought a top secret US government super raptor to the island. The whole place is also a radioactive wonderland, prone to making everything into horrible mutated killing machines. (Of course.) The UN is tangentially involved and, as always, completely ineffective, providing extra intrigue to the plot (allegedly,) and ridiculous superpower conflict overtones. While all this is going on Lamas is chasing targets through the forest using his cell phone, which keeps saying "Target Acquired" but giving him no guidance...what a useful smartphone app!

When Lamas and DuMond find the wreck of the DC-3 they discover the truth behind the government program and some canisters (which look suspiciously like propane containers) containing highly radioactive material. So why mess with them? These highly trained agents don't mind exposure to weapons grade plutonium? Because the plot was too coherent, a volcano suddenly erupts, and DuMond finds the raptor's spawning cave (enjoy the puppy-sized raptors.) I was hoping that the super-annoying CIA operative would be eaten by creatures, so annoying is she, but it turns out sometimes things don't end up like you want them to. Shortly after the vulcanism subplot began, the operation also became imperiled by a typhoon, and I started to think that "Raptor Island" was too mundane for a film of this scope, and that a better and more accurate title would have been "Terrorists Versus Special Forces Versus The United Nations Versus Dinosaurs Versus The Typhoon Versus The Volcano." Of course that would be harder to fit on a marquee.

You know the film must be amazingly bad when Lorenzo Lamas is unquestionably the best actor giving the most nuanced performance in the film (especially when compared to Bauer and DuMond,) but the filmmakers are not done with their humorous tale quite yet. After some (more) ridiculous dialogue ("So what do we do?"..."We trust our instincts.") it becomes clear that the volcano is now as big a threat as the dinosaurs and the terrorists; the immortal exchange "You mean this whole place is gonna' blow?"..."All of it!" occurs, making me laugh, because I thought that there was a scintilla more truth in advertising there and that they were talking about the rest of the movie. Maybe I was just projecting my interpretation onto the dialogue, though. Accompanied by some truly tortuous backstory conversation, Lamas and DuMond rub sulfurous mud (!) all over themselves, matching their own scents to the odor of the movie. This protects them from being smelled by the dinosaurs, you see.

In the stirring conclusion they decide to detonate a string of charges around the nest, but it may make the whole unstable island explode. There's explosions, lurking terrorists, lava running everywhere, a bold helicopter rescue wherein the helicopter has to fly in a dreadfully vicious storm (despite it obviously being a calm day in the exterior shots.) This scene had a lot of parallels to the classic day versus night technique of the great Ed Wood. When the final drama involving whether or not to let Azir be eaten, the peculiar decisions about when and how to use signal flares (answer: unlike any actual human ever would,) and the ultimate and utterly predictable destruction of the island finally plays out on the screen, it's a good feeling, a feeling of pride, a feeling of accomplishment: you have made it through a film where few would dare to tread, and fewer still could make it to the end.

In all truth, "Raptor Island" is vacuous but entertaining if you want to see a totally ridiculous monster-terrorist-espionage thriller with a hilariously outlandish premise and more ludicrous plotpoint coincidences than most any other film in its class. Dinosaurs have never been so funny.

Raptor Island: 1 out of 10: The Sci-fi channel has produced some stinkers (Boa vs. Python, Boa vs. Cobra, and Feather Boa vs. Mink) but Raptor Island easily eclipses all of them. There simply are not movies this bad outside of a Lionsgate home movie film festival.

Where can one begin? The special effects have to be seen to be believed. The entire film is in CGI (except for Lorenzo Lamas who is decidedly not animated) and it couldn't be more poorly done. Remember those old prehistoric planet movies from the sixties where they would superimpose some iguana stock footage attacking some middle aged vaudeville guys dressed as caveman? Raptor Island lowers that bar considerably.

The raptors seem to have been ported from an old Saturn CD-Rom game. They have five distinct frames of animation each and blink in and out of the picture. Gunshots are represented by graphics that would make House of the Dead weep and the raptors when shot ignore the bullets then fall down.

The raptors are perhaps the stupidest creatures ever shown on film ignoring actors and each other as they gaze off into the distance with bloody mouths that look like a five year old got into mommy's make-up box.

Add other equally bad CGI rendered sand, ships and planes and one really wishes the MST3000 crew would come back for an encore anniversary show.

With very badly rendered monsters and a throwaway script one could at least hope for something gratuitous to liven things up. (You know a decapitation scene or skinny dipping scene or a combination of the two.) Raptor Island provides nothing of the sort. This is family friendly entertainment. But only if you really really hate your family.

This was not meant to be a great movie. If you are a fourteen year old looking for a new dinosaur vs people movie,this will probably still disappoint.I love monster movies. I love dinosaurs! I love dopey drive-in fodder. Allowing for all that,this was still not a good movie.
I have seen better SPFX on video games. I have read better dialog in comic books. Sadly, it was too bloody for younger viewers and too stupid for older ones.
When it comes to monster movies, I really am a cheap date, shamelessly easy to entertain. This was just a sad waist of effort.No excuse for that one. They could have done everything better.
JPF

It's a "Sci-Fi Channel original". Simply put, it's bad acting, bad language, bad CGI and overdone sex at the most ridiculous and absurd times. But this movie, admittedly, does depart from that pattern. There is no sexual interaction between the two main protagonists, and the acting is acceptable. That said, this movie should win an award for crappy CGI. For example, a raptor, which looks nothing like its prehistoric self, is shot. A little burst of red appears where it was shot. no wound. No reaction. its shot enough times, and it just falls over. On top of that, the "trained soldiers" don't seem to grasp the concept of conserving ammo. The plotline gives no explanation for the presence of the dinosaurs, a lousy excuse for their size, and doesn't even factor in the T-Rex, or whatever the heck it was. In my opinion, it would have been a better movie altogether, is the dinosaurs were just not there, and it had been a spec-ops type movie.
in short, don't buy this expecting it to be the next Jurassic Park. Don't buy it if you're a dinosaur buff, as you will be highly offended. Buy it for those days you just feel like watching something pointless.

Fans of Jurassic Park and action movies know that there are certain tropes guaranteed to show up in any schlocky monster movie. All of these rules were set down by Predator, which set the tone for movies that involve hostile surroundings, alien monsters, and villainous guerrillas. There's the well-armed military team with a secret mission, the rogue bad guy who gets away, the hot chick who knows how to fight but can't be trusted, the guy who panics, the martyr who stays behind to sacrifice himself to save the rest, "monster vision" and the monster's key weakness. When done right, we get movies like Pitch Black and Dog Soldiers. When done wrong we get...Raptor Island.

Raptor Island checks off all the boxes: the Navy SEALs are on a top secret mission to capture a gun runner who escapes, they also rescue a pretty spy who was formerly the bad guy's hostage, one of the SEALs panics and runs headlong into a raptor nest, one of the SEALs who gets his arm mauled decides to stay behind so the others can flee, we frequently see the foliage through the raptor's eyes (black-and-white, apparently), and their key weakness is they hunt only by sense of smell. We know this because the two leads dunk themselves in stinky mud off camera, which saves the actors from having to apply it themselves. And yes, this is exactly the same tactic Arnie used in Predator.

How have the raptors survived this long? What do they eat? Who are you, Dr. Alan Grant? Who cares, it's time to light up some raptors with heavy weapons! HOORAH!

The animation isn't actually all that bad. The raptors move well enough and through clever use of camera angles blend in with the environment most of the time. The problem is when the SEALs begin firing on the raptors.

The raptors never actually react to getting hit for most of the film. Instead, they just do what they do -- staring, squawking, at one point continuing to graze on a dead body - while little red starbursts that are supposed to represent bullet hits appear all over their body. It's got all the believability of a 1980s video game. Perhaps it's because these are mutant raptors. Perhaps it's because the costs involved in creating detailed splash physics were beyond the capabilities of the CG design team. They were certainly busy modeling everything else: sinking ships, helicopters, a volcanic explosion, and a Carnotaurus.

Raptor Island assumes you've seen Jurassic Park, which sets down all the rules for "raptors." Never mind that the appearance of Jurassic Park's raptors has since been discredited - raptors looked more like angry turkeys than the man-sized monsters in the series. Why exactly is there an island full of raptors? Well, ya see, this spy plane crashed with dinosaur eggs in some wooden box. It was also carrying radioactive material that leaked into the ground 40 years ago. The eggs were incubated in the island's volcano, which sped up the evolution process and bred dozens of raptors. And a Carnotaurus. Makes perfect sense, right?

No. No it does not.

For some reason the writers keep rubbing our noses in the insanity of it all. The pretty lead brings up radioactivity several times, until finally Lorenzo Lamas finally declares, "Nothing on this island makes sense!"

And that's the smartest thing about this movie.

This has to be the WORST movie I have ever seen... Im a Lamas fan.. but this is horrible.. bad acting, horrible fx, plastic Raptor's.. at that loser from Scarface.. Bauer.. what a goon.

Avoid this trash like the plaque.. I warn you now!

This DVD is more of a comedy for adults. It is very weak in the filming. For example, the opening scene of an airplane flying, looks like someone took a toy plane and swung it from a string and rocked it back and forth. From that point on, it was fun to see how amaturish the film was. Probably should have returned it.