Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not much croc, 29 Jun 2009
The simplest ideas are often the best, and there are few movie ideas more effective than depositing your characters in a hole and watching their increasingly desperate attempts to extricate themselves from it. In Rogue the hole is a tiny island that a group of tourists in Australia's Northern Territory find themselves on after a giant salt water crocodile in a particularly bad mood causes them to wreck their tour boat, and just to make matters worse, it's on a tidal river and they'll be up to their necks in water by nightfall. Oh, and nobody knows they're there. Foolproof, right? Wrong. In Wolf Creek director Greg McLean's hands it's a real wet sponge of a movie, professionally more than competent but often just... dull.
A box-office disaster in its native Oz and barely even released in the US, for once you don't feel the Weinsteins were entirely unjustified in shelving the movie for a year while they tried to figure out what to do with it before just dumping it when no-one was looking. This doesn't feel like a film that's been destroyed in post-production so much as one that just doesn't really work despite everyone's best efforts. Radha Mitchell is fine as the heroine and the low-key supporting cast convincing enough - the tour boat even gives a convincing reason for imported American `star' Michael Vartan - and there's some spectacular footage of the Territory that may well be the best digital photography to date. But the film just ambles along at a relentlessly even and unhurried pace, taking forever to strand its supply of walking food and never getting particularly excited even once the croc starts picking them off from its private larder. Things do pick up at the halfway point when someone gets the bright idea of swimming to dry land with a rope, but the promised thrills never really materialise because the film doesn't do anything we haven't seen many, many times before or do them well enough to trouble the edge of your seat.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that the croc doesn't just have no personality (which shouldn't be a problem since it's just an animal), it has no presence. There's no sense of a huge killer lurking under the water, no threat, no danger. Instead, the film just seems becalmed. It's not until some 80 minutes into the movie that we finally get much of a look at the croc, and despite being an impressive mixture of CGi and animatronics even then there's no adrenaline rush or tension as it goes through what feels like a scaled-down version of the cave scene from Dragonslayer (McLean isn't exactly the most imaginative of filmmakers, it must be said).
There are minor compensations along the way: the performances are certainly above average for such generic fodder, partially because McLean has a good feel for characterisation through small details, and there are a couple of musical homages - a distress flare is slyly underscored with a quote from Jerry Goldsmith's score for Alien while Never Smile at a Crocodile plays over the end credits. Yet ultimately it's the kind of film that all too often leaves your pulse undisturbed as you wonder what you'll watch next. There are no surprises, nothing to keep you hooked and definitely no bite. It's just too damn average to leave much impression.
A few decent extras on the DVD hint at a better film that could have been made, but you may not be able to summon up the enthusiasm to watch them after the disappointment of the main feature.
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5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well, they wanted to see a crocodile in its native environment, didn't they?, 10 Aug 2008
Needless to say, after having watched Black Water and now Rogue (very different - and very good - movies from the land Down Under) on consecutive days, I will not be planning any vacation in Australia's Northern Territory any time soon. Frankly, I don't understand why so many people who have no business wandering into "the wild" seem to enjoy taking wilderness cruises and seeing some of nature's most efficient killers for themselves. I learned all l need to know about crocodiles from Steve Irwin. Of course, the characters in this movie thought they were safe in their little tour boat, but I wouldn't trust the freakin' Love Boat in croc-infested waters - not salties, at any rate. Now I don't think Rogue is as intense or impressive as Black Water, but it definitely deserves to be seen by horror fans; unfortunately, thanks to the obviously ineffectual Weinstein Company, the film had a delayed and generally all screwed up North American release (originally opening in ten - count `em, ten - theatres), making this a film that American audiences will have to find on their own. That's unfortunate.
I do have problems with the title of this movie, as it tends to put the croc in a negative light. Sure, he's at least eighteen feet and a couple of tons of ferocious, man-eating monster, but it's not like he went out of his way to attack these people. They came into his territory (having deviated from their course in response to an emergency flare), and the croc is really just defending what's his. I'm not saying he wasn't aggressive, turning their boat over and all, but it's not like he went off on his own in search of human flesh miles away from home. In other words, he's not a rogue at all. In practical terms, he's not even a real crocodile, but rather a combination of animatronics and CGI for the most part. The effects are really well done (with the crocodile movements based on real world examples) and include a few good death rolls; you can't really tell the bugger's not real until the film's concluding scenes.
So, you have this group of tourists and their cute tour guide Kate (Radha Mitchell, who supposedly had an accent coach, even though she's Australian to begin with) trapped on this little island in the middle of a mango swamp. Their boat started taking on water when the croc almost flipped it, and then it sort of crashed onto land, so nobody's going anywhere in the boat. But wait - it gets worse. Evening isn't too far away, and the tide is going to completely cover that little island when it rolls in. They have to do something if they're going to survive. I think we can all learn some important survival tips from what follows. First off, don't be a hero; you don't want to just jump in the water and try to swim across like an idiot. Wait around because someone will come up with an idea - one that might actually work. Now this next lesson is really important - appoint a little committee to take out whoever turns out to be Mr. Stupidity because he is a huge danger to the success of said plan. Throw this guy to the wolves (or croc, as the case may be) if necessary. Finally, make you some sharp sticks. Nobody even thinks of this, but that's the first thing I'd be doing. It may not save your life, but you can at least try to poke the monster's eye out instead of just sitting there like a dead duck if he comes your way.
The film loses a little credibility at the end, and characterization is a bit of an issue for me, but Rogue is still a thrilling film to watch. Why its production company basically chose to dump it out there in North America without any promotion at all is a mystery to me - apparently, they don't like pleasing their audience or making any money.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Good But Had A Few Annoying Things., 28 Jun 2009
After seeing and being horrified by Wolf Creek, I decided to buy this item to see what the director could do with a nasty crocodile. The story begins with a American (Michael Vartan) arriving at Austrlia for a trip, he joins with other people on a boat to see the crocodiles led by Kate (Radha Mitchell). After being interputed by supposely her ex-boyfriend Neil (Sam Worthington), they soon go into waters they shouldn't go in and find themselves chased by one of the nasty crocs. They must fight for surrival as the island they are now trapped in is a dangerous place with rising water and getting dark. Who will live during this terrifiying time? I thought it was going to be a jumpy film, had to mute one scene but other than that I didn't scream like a usual horror film would. It had a good start, gripping moments but with a stupid ending that really annoyed me. Like why kill off five people out of the whole cast, leaving two main stars and many other surrivours? I thought croc films are there to get each one, leaving maybe one or two people that are going to get together in the end. Also when one of the characters went in the film, it lost the whole fun thing in this. Spolier aleart for this, why did it have to get the dog? Come on! So in all, it's a good film to watch with some good extras and okay pefomances from Vartan, Mitchell and Worthington but it had far too many annoying things to rise it higher than three stars.
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