Primal War Review – It’s Green Berets vs. Dinosaurs in a jubilant Vietnam War fest | film

ACast directly and unabashedly on viewers who love soldiers, gore, and dinosaurs—as well as dinosaurs that maul soldiers—this adaptation of Ethan Pettus’ 2017 novel is highly repetitive yet strangely watchable. Although the film was filmed in Australia with a mostly Australian cast and a few American actors, it is supposed to be set in Vietnam in the late 1960s when the American armed forces were facing the Viet Cong.

But there are other forces to contend with, and we don’t just mean Chinese or Soviet secret agents, although the latter figures prominently here. It turns out that a hideous science experiment by one of the aforementioned factions has accidentally introduced an entire army of dinosaurs into the jungle and they start merrily chewing their way through anyone who gets in their way. When a squad of Green Berets goes missing, Colonel Jericho (Jeremy Piven, lustfully manipulating them) assigns the elite Eagle Squad to go in and find out what happened. The troop is led by Sergeant Ryan Baker (Home and Away veteran Ryan Kwanten) who commands a typically diverse group of grunts who, as we’ll soon see, represent a set of IQs that leave them ill-equipped to deal with the challenge they’re about to face.

At least they have some firepower, which means a lot of the dialogue and background music is drowned out by gunfire. Speaking of music, the production bombed out some needle drops on the nose including Run Through the Jungle, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Fortunate Son in case anyone forgot this was supposed to be the 60s. The money might have been better spent on good visual effects because the dinosaurs, especially when seen in full daylight sequences, look pretty agile. The representations of the blown-out entrails of prehistoric beasts are more convincing, and there’s a cheerful exhilaration that drives the film.