Primitive War

Official Australian release date: 21/8/25. Viewed: 25/8/25.

Director: Luke Sparke
Actors: Ryan Kwanten, Carlos Sanson, Tricia Helfer, Jeremy Piven
Genre: Action / Sci-Fi
Rating: MA

‘Primitive War’ is a low-budget, Australian-made film, set in 1968 during the Vietnam War. The twist? There’s dinosaurs in the Vietnamese jungle for some reason! After a quick set-up where some US special forces go missing, Colonel Jericho (Piven) sends in Vulture Squad to find them, led by Sergeant Baker (Kwanten). These 7 men all head into the jungle and hang around longer than I expected! There’s a fair bit of ‘Predator’ influence at times.

All of them get some time for us to know them, primarily Baker and Leon (Sanson). They somehow run into a Russian scientist, Sofia (Helfer), who mentions multiple times how she saved their lives. It’s a bit drawn out in the middle/first hour, but we slowly get introduced to little raptors and then a T Rex to keep things interesting. It is a little long at 2 hours 10min, with some long exposition scenes and the whole wormhole plot could’ve been cut down.

Regardless, director Sparke has saved the budget for the final 45min, where it’s dinosaur overload – the CGI is pretty good, arguably more realistic than some ‘Jurassic Park’s, with feathered raptors, different looking Brontosaurus and just-different-enough Tyrannosaurs. Unlike the last 3 ‘Jurassic World’ films – and ‘65’ – it avoids the main let-down of these films, by having a good amount of violence and gore/dinosaur attacks/jump scares. The soundtrack is solid, the Gold Coast occasionally looks like it could be Vietnam, the actors are mostly OK, but we’re all here to see dinosaurs and a high body-count – and ‘Primitive War’ delivers.

Overall: Dinosaurs and high body-count, hard not to enjoy!

Gav’s Rating: 3.5 stars