[DVD Review (R1)] ROGUE
My excitement to see Greg McClean’s ’sophmore’ effort Rogue, proved infectious and soon Wyv’ and I almost turned StalePopcorn into “Rogue-Central” when the inexplicable ‘release debacle’ started happening. We broke news of poster and trailer releases, we updated you on release date set-backs, I tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully behind the scenes to try and get an interview with McClean himself in order to understand why The Weinstein Brothers were messing around with a film that was garnering sensational word-of-mouth from test screenings and horror festivals AND we ran, despite it not really being our “style” here at StalePopcorn, an ‘early word’ review from someone involved in the film, who had seen it and raved about it. To say we were ’supportive’ of this movie would be an understatement (just type the word “Rogue” into our Search Box on the left hand side of the screen and see what I’m talking about when I use the term “extensive coverage”).
Nobody really knows exactly why The Weinsteins have treat McClean’s homage to the B-movie so shabbily. They are the people that stuck by The Wayans Brothers and all their shite so, when money is as tight as what it is for their company at the moment, why would they all but abandon a film that would play wonderfully to the Friday/Saturday night horror crowds and quite possibly pull in the cash as a ’sleeper horror’ a la Saw, Hostel etc. If Lionsgate had distribution on this movie they’d be bathing in friggin’ money, I’m telling you. The Weinsteins behaviour would be somewhat understandable, but still dispicable, if they had a “bad product”. But they don’t. Far from it in fact.
Pete McKell (Michael Vartan) is a cynical American travel writer who joins a disparate group of holiday-makers on a river cruise through the waters of Kakadu National Park, Australia, led by tour captain, Kate (Radha Mitchell), a feisty young woman who quickly and wrongly assumes Peter is just another ‘city-slicker’ in search of a quick thrill. After an uneventful day cruising the river, Kate is reluctantly persuaded to steer their boat into unexplored territory and respond to a distress flare that only a couple of her patrons are sure they’ve seen.
They discover a secluded lake but terror strikes when their boat receives a powerful blow from beneath the murky depths and begins to sink. With little choice, Kate beaches the vessel on the closest dry land -a tiny mud bank. But with a rising tide and only half an hour of daylight left, fear grips the group as they realise they are trapped in the lair of a ‘rogue’ crocodile, governed only by its need to hunt and kill.
Begrudgingly, Pete and Kate join forces to keep hysteria amongst the fellow tourists under control and, with water rising and slowly stealing available land for them to hide on AND the ‘rogue’ crocodile getting more and more savage in its hunting technique, the duo realise they have to find a way free from the mud bank, even if it means going back into the water.
Greg McClean is obviously as big a fan of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws as I am. He hasn’t just acknowledged that the “less is more” approach to revealing his “beast” is the way forward a la Spielberg’s 70s masterpiece. He has spotted that strong, fully-etched characters at the centre of proceedings is an almost must. Anyone can put a bunch of teens or buffed up model types on a boat in the middle of nowhere and just have them savaged (just check out the Anaconda movies to evidence this). It takes a great deal of talent to make you ‘care’ about them. Spielberg did it in Jaws. McClean has made an extremely admirable effort of doing the same here.
What’s most surprising and enjoyable about Rogue is that, for a film allegedly about people succumbing to attacks from a giant crocodile, there’s actually very little crocodile attacks. The film isn’t really about that. We’re dealing with the tension, the anxiety, the human conflict more then we are the actual crocodile. McClean uses less then twenty minutes to present us with the “fodder” and to get them into place but in that time he gives us all the information we could possibly need to know to genuinely care about their plight. All do a great job of creating realistic and believable characters. Specific mentions should go to a barely recognisable John Jarrett (’Mick’ from Wolf Creek), who is an absolute joy as a widower whose motivations and feelings are there for us to find, not to have rubbed in our faces, and Sam Worthington as a “dick” from Kate’s personal life, out to cause trouble on the river route. His character’s journey from “agressive, obnoxious type” to “noble hero” is a little forced, but he’s charismatic enough with his time on screen for anyone with even one drop of common sense to totally understand why James Cameron went crazy to get him in Avatar and then subsequently recommend him for Terminator: Salvation.
In the lead performances, Radha Mitchell is just as brilliant as you’d expect. The woman is gorgeous and talented and has never given a bad performance - even in films that were bad regardless of her being in them. Once again here, Mitchell delivers a fully realised performance, speaking in her native Australian accent and conveying a character that anyone who has ever been to Australia will instantly recognise; the passionate local who cannot understand why ‘visitors’ look down their nose at her and her country.
I’m no fan of Michael Vartan. I haven’t seen enough of his work to outright hate him, but what I have seen him in has only led to me thinking of him as a vapid, empty “model-only” type. He changed my opinion with his work in this film. Now, I’m not saying he delivers a performance of De Niro like intensity and realism (let’s not get ahead of ourselves) but he works the character he has to play well and he sells the effects work to the standard they need to be sold.
The film loses its way a little in the third act. It’s still a tension-soaked and intense thrill ride in the areas it needs to be but the whole ‘looking after the dog’ and the mechanics used to get certain characters in place for the finale is a little clunky. I can understand a lot of people, especially if they’re judging from the OTT Region 1 DVD cover, going into this and coming away disappointed with the distinct lack of carnage (hell, 95% of the characters convienently escape with their lives!) but, if you take nothing else from this review, go into this as a tense character-driven thrill ride and not a ‘monster-movie’ and I can guarantee the film will pay off handsomely.
You just have to look at the beauty to which McClean has presented Australia, specifically the Northern Territories, through his camera lens (there’s scenic shots in this movie that genuinely make you think to yourself “Wow, if that was the last image I saw then I’d happily go into the mouth of a giant crocodile!”) to realise that this isn’t some throwaway B-movie. This is a masterful homage to the B-movie. It just shows how far Tarantino’s dick is shoved down Harvey and Bob’s throats - he brings a degree of class to ripping on his favourite types of movies and it’s “art”. McClean does it equally as well in some regards and it’s ‘bargain basket’ fodder. Once this movie is ‘fully’ and ‘freely’ out there on all continents, you’ll find the pace is going to pick-up on just how much it is embraced. I can see this movie getting passed around from fanboy to fanboy. I can see festivals like Roger Ebert’s Annual Overlooked event picking it up.
Rogue will have its day and it may take time, like a fine wine, for it to end up being fully appreciated in the way it deserves, but it will.
Popcorn Ratings Explained
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