Sometimes being left to live is the worst monkey on your back: a review of "Primal Force"

Primal Force    TV Movie    (1999)
     Sometimes being left to live is the worst monkey on your back.
Director:  Nelson McCormick
Starring:  Richard Fancy (Deutsch), Mark Kiely (Scott Davis), Ron Perlman (Frank Brodie), Kimberlee Peterson (Kelsey Cunningham), Guillermo Rios (Eddie Mendoza), Julian Sedgwick (Stan Kovacs), Roxana Zal (Tara Matthews).
     A small charter plane has crashed on a banned and supposedly lifeless island, stranding the pilot, a real estate broker and a wealthy young woman.  The rescue team put together to go in, unable to contract a professional advisor, as all believe the isle is cursed, are forced to hire the only guide available; a drunken ill tempered recluse, who's spent the last decade attempting to running from the memories of animal experimentation gone horribly wrong.  Now, with the recovery crew, he will be going into his nightmare, and it is viciously wide awake.
     This is average paint by numbers TV movie quality; dialogue is generally uninspired, sieve-like plot, and characters are stock (the spoiled little rich girl, the chatty plotting business man, the doctor with a secret, the hard nosed tough guy, the haunted man).  The acting runs from so-so to excellent.  The camera angles and cuts are very frenetic, attempting to create a suspenseful atmosphere, and there are the obligatory stunt shots in slo-mo.  Basically, it's a pizza and a movie evening TV fare.
     Favorite Line(s):  (Matthews/Zal)  "They're evolving at an incredible rate!  They're almost neanderthal!"  (Brodie/Perlman)  "I'd like to get out of here before they get cable." 
     Rainy day rental.
     First published in 2004 on The Perlman Pages.

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