Steve Irwin was wrong

Primeval (Michael Katleman, 2007) - C+

A message movie about Africa: Gustave the enormous crocodile is (or is engendered by, if you prefer) the evil in the hearts of men that turns "the cradle of all mankind" into a famine-ravaged warzone where, as the film helpfully points out, "people shoot at each other" -- the title isn't arbitrary, and nor is the fact that the fearsome local warlord is monikered "Little Gustave." Our protagonists -- a news production team -- come in for the same reasons and with the same attitudes that most westerners have when they turn their attention to the continent: Gustave has just claimed a white victim and thus made it to American tv sets, exasperation quickly outs as characters start saying things like "the more you help, the worse it gets," and their plan to take the croc alive (lasso human nature?) is mysteriously devoid of any inkling of what to do afterward. The movie doesn't know what to do with the enormous crocodile either, shoehorning in occasional horror sequences but forgetting about him altogether for long stretches. The horror stuff doesn't really work, since it's mostly dark and murky and the special effects suck, but Primeval is surprisingly sincere about its subtext (so much so that it repeatedly turns subtext into text), and the degree to which it takes the time to stop and admire the scenery -- literally and figuratively -- is surprising. Had this actually functioned as a genre film, we might have had something; still, I'm intrigued by its notion that the place where humanity began is not coincidentally also a hellish pit of despair.