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 Rogue
(2007)
R1 / NTSC DVD
Dimension / 2008
Directed by Greg McLean
Written by Greg McLean
Cast: Radha Mitchell, Michael Vartan, Sam Worthington & John
Jarratt
Review by Brian Harris
A group of tourists on an Australian outback nature tour are
attack by a massive, and hungry, territorial crocodile,
forcing them to take refuge on a tiny mud island. As if the
situation couldn’t get any worse, the tide is coming in and
their little island will slip beneath the water, providing
the croc with a tourist buffet!
First there was Jaws, then there was…hmm…not really much.
Jaws is and always will be the best Nature Gone Amok film
ever made but I gotta tell you, Rogue is no slouch either.
The film has, at times, unbearable tension, relatively
interesting characters and some incredibly vicious croc
attacks; all of which work surprisingly well together
considering there isn’t much of a story to begin with. While
I’m all for rubber monsters, Rogue’s croc was CG and
fantastic in every way, there was rarely a time that I could
have pointed to the film and said, “Dude that looks so
fake!”
I’ve heard some complain that the characters in this film
were all Aussie stereotypes and honestly I can’t say I give
a shit. It always appears to me that most countries welcome,
and even encourage, stereotypes when it comes to American
characters but when stereotypes are applied to their own
people, well, let the whining begin! Personally, I thought
all of the characters in Rogue were developed enough to be
interesting, or at the very least interesting enough to
watch before being eaten. Why spend half the film working on
characterization when we can pretty much all lay million
dollar bets on who will live and who will die?
Rogue is damn near perfect in its simplicity; the
entertainment value was through the roof and the monster was
awesome. Need there be more? This was no Jaws but I’ll be
damned if it isn’t one of the better Nature Gone Amok films
we’ve seen since Spielberg’s classic. Why Dimension passed
on playing this in theaters and took so long to release it
to DVD is a mystery but Rogue is one of their best damn
releases this year. |
