2025 - PRIMITIVE WAR, the "B" movie lives on

It's 1968 and we're in Vietnam where an elite group of Green Berets have been sent to a hidden valley to find out what happened to a previous squad of soldiers.  Well surprise surprise the valley is full of hungry dinosaurs who are part of a time travel experiment the evil Russians have been running.  This film isn't called Primitive War for nothing.  Yes this is a cross between Jurassic Park, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and a whole bunch of Vietnam war movies I've missed. 

You can put this in the 12 year old boy category of films.  There's man eating dinosaurs, lots of gun play, evil Russians, people getting graphically eaten by dinosaurs and a goofy science fiction subplot to tie it all together.  The cast seems game and appears to enjoy shooting their guns because there is a lot a shooting of dinosaurs so we don't have to deal with pesky things like character development and dialog.  The film was shot in Australia which is obviously subbing for Vietnam.  The film's budget was 7 million dollars, B movies aren't that cheap anymore.

 

The special effects are of a variable quality.  The CGI dinosaurs look better in the dark than the light.  It costs a lot of money these days to make realistic phony dinosaurs.  The director/writer Luke Sparke must be a real auteur since he has his name on about every other title in the credit scroll.  This is very enjoyable foolishness and yes there is a woman in the film because there always has to be a woman in a film like this.  Primitive War is certainly more enjoyable than those recent Jurassic World films.

 

The film was written by Ethan Pettus and Luke Sparke, the running time is 133 minutes.