Product Details

• Actors: Dominic Purcell, Brooke Langton, Orlando Jones, Jürgen Prochnow, Gideon Emery
• Directors: Michael Katleman
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: June 12, 2007
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000OCZ9WS
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,784 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Who would have thought that Primeval, a movie about a giant man-eating crocodile, would turn out to be closer in spirit to Hotel Rwanda and Blood Diamond than to the average slasher-movie horror flick? Perhaps it doesn't aim at the social-issue heights of those more prestigious films, and the acting is uneven to say the least, but give this monster movie credit for trying to get in the smart, edgy vein of some of John Sayles's early scripts for Roger Corman. A cable-TV news crew travels to Burundi to capture footage of (and, if possible, just plain capture) the enormous crocodile that's been terrorizing the local landscape. Making things more complicated: the local landscape is also being terrorized by a civil war. The film does a clever job of weaving the two scourges together, and the script by John Brancato and Michael Ferris pays surprisingly explicit attention to the way the West has been slow to acknowledge human-rights disasters in Africa, calling out Rwanda and Darfur by name. Now if only the characters were more than cardboard-thin; only Orlando Jones, doing the standard-issue wisecracking black sidekick, makes any particular impression. (Poor Jurgen Prochnow, glowering about in the Great White Hunter role--you'd think the guy who commanded Das Boot could knock off a giant reptile, no problem.) Pedestrian direction doesn't bring the human element to life, but give it up for a fine crocodile--his name is Gustave--who exists in a nifty, hungry computer-generated frenzy for most of his performance. And the script even provides Gustave some behavioral motivation that recalls the it's-not-their-fault-it's-man's-fault spirit of 1950s monster movies. Not a bad effort at all. --Robert Horton

Product Description
Inspired by the true story of a legendary 25-foot man-eating crocodile comes the intense, terrifying horror movie PRIMEVAL, starring Dominic Purcell (TV's PRISON BREAK) and Orlando Jones (RUNAWAY JURY, EVOLUTION). An American news crew, determined to capture this voracious monster and stop his demonic rampage, travel deep within the darkest reaches of Africa to hunt their prey. But Gustave, as the natives call him, is also on the hunt — always on the move, always elusive, always hungry for human flesh. Heart-pounding fear is nonstop in this edge-of-your-seat nail-biter about the cunning killer who continues to blaze his blood-soaked trail of terror.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Misleading ... But Interesting, July 26, 2007

By	A. Abbott "Madam Music" (South Dakota) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I rented primeval, I was expecting (and hoping) for a sci-fi channel type movie about a monster crocodile that would attack everyone. Well, it was partly like that. A group of journalists is sent to a civil war stricken South African country to report on the capture of this man eater.

The journalist meet a few local villagers and hook up with a crocodile expert. However, their lives are threatened by much more than just a crocodile when the cameraman accidentally films men from a local warlord's army executing a tribal holy man and his family.

The crocodile does play an important part in this movie; but I felt that it became more of a movie about the Burundi civil war; its war lords; and a general statement about ravaged Africa as a whole. Some people, I have read, did not like this movie. I think its worth a try, I certainly enjoyed it.

By the way, Gustave (the killer crocodile) is indeed real. He lives in Burundi and may be the largest freshwater crocodile in the world. I Googled "Gustave crocodile in Africa" and got a BBC News link from a 2002 article. Interesting.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Primitive, April 9, 2007

By	Mark Eremite "This Is A Display Model Only" (Seoul, South Korea) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

"Primeval" tricked me. I knew nothing about the film other than a brief blurb I'd read that said it was about a serial killer and was based on a true story. Turns out the "serial killer" is, in fact, a large, hundred-year old crocodile named Gustave. Ho ho!

Eh.

The story is about a news team that has been sent to Africa in order to cover a story on (and perhaps capture) the elusive beast. The movie briefly explains why a blood-thirsty crocodile is news (and even why it would be left up to journalists, a cameraman, and two wild animal experts to catch a critter that's been eating unsuspecting humans for decades), but the explanation is weak, at best.

Even weaker is the awkward melding of the croc plot with another story thread involving an African civil war that is propogated and prolonged by a blood-thirsty warlord named -- that's right -- Gustave. Is this a powerful political metaphor? Probably. Is it done well? Of course it isn't.

Populated by stock characters of the worst kind (although Orlando Jones manages to do some good things with his smart-aleck cameraman role), "Primeval" succumbs to ludicrousness (the characters, after a recent croc attack, decide that a rickety shack built IN the river is their best safe haven), pointlessness (the dull bonfire "bonding" scene where a tribal drum session is followed by the Westerners singing "Amazing Grace" off-key), and confusion (most of the croc attacks take place at night and are dizzyingly hard to follow). Tack on a hokey (albeit unfortunately true) message about American apathy toward African brutality, and you're left with a jury-rigged mess of a movie, a schizophrenic cinematic experience that tries to be viscerally scintillating as well as politically charged. If it had picked one or the other, it may have had at least a shred of consistency to give it pluck and cohesion. Instead, it's a mawkish blend of macabre and moralistic.

And it's not about a serial killer.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fit to be called "creature feature"!, November 14, 2007

By	Desmond A. Lackram - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

the plot was great. the crocodile was only a portion of what was going on . the real problem was a war that struck africa. while gustave was busy eating people. the treaty was signed ending the war . and best of all gustave lives! he is currently living and hunting on the rambizi river.