An angry Nicolas Cage is usually a very entertaining Nicolas Cage. 

In the latest installment of the WATC(H) we get one of the crankiest renditions of Nicolas Cage and that part of the film is pretty great.

I’m talking, of course, about Primal (2019), the third (and final) film in what I’m calling his South American trilogy of criminal activity. 

The World According to Frank Walsh

The world of Frank Walsh (Nicolas Cage) is a pretty cynical and self-serving one. Frank holds to the “manifest destiny” school of thought that says if something can be exploited for personal gain, by all means exploit it. Frank is an ex-military exotic animal hunter who makes his living by poaching and capturing exotic animals from around the world and selling them to the highest bidder. 

Frank is habitually angry and disgruntled. He’s a drinker and a foul-mouthed malcontent. Because the world doesn’t revolve around Frank and Frank’s wishes, he basically holds the middle finger posture towards all of it. Freud would say this is because Frank’s father never acknowledged or accepted him for who he was, but that may be only part of the story. 

When the film starts, Frank is Brazil, up in a tree hunting for animals and he successfully captures a quite rare white jaguar (ghost cat). He looks a bit like Indiana Jones with his wide-brimmed hat, unshaven stubble, and adventure clothes. Knowing that he has a rare animal, he plans to smuggle it back to the U.S. on a boat to Mexico and then sell it to the highest bidder. Frank books passage for a truckload of animals including the jaguar with an ethically flexible ship captain he is friends with who is willing to look the other way on the smuggling.

Unfortunately, the ship has other passengers, and this greatly irritates Frank. 

Before setting sail en route to Puerto Rico, a gang of U.S. Marshall’s lead by the hard-nosed Marshal John Ringer (LaMonica Garrett) board the ship, the Mimer, to transport a very dangerous military prisoner Richard Loffler (Kevin Durand) who requires constant guard and surveillance. Loffler, who is a certifiably crazy and dangerous military assassin, has a rare health condition that may cause seizures or death if the atmospheric pressure changes even slightly. We know this because two people accompanying the Marshall’s entourage are Naval officer and psychologist Dr. Ellen Taylor (Famke Janssen) and U.S. Attorney general Paul Freed (Michael Imperioli). 

Transporting this criminal on “his ship” does not sit well with Frank and he badgers the Freed and Taylor until they tell him who Loffler is and why he is being transported “alive” back to the U.S. for trial. 

Loffler, who has a lot in common with Hanibel Lechter it seems, is held in a cage within the cargo area where he is also chained to restrict mobility. 

Not surprisingly, Loffler finds a way to escape his prison by faking a seizure and killing the two guards who are supposed to be watching him. Once he is liberated from his cell on the largish ship, Loffler then proceeds to free all Frank’s animals from their cages and to slowly kill the U.S. Marshall’s (and some crew) one by one.

It’s kind of like the reverse plot of Die Hard except with a dash of Jumanji–where the bad guy gets loose in the bowels of the ship and slowly seeks to escape his “captivity” by destroying the water supply, re-routing the navigation, and ultimately calling in the Coast Guard in an attempt to hijack a plane out of there.

The only thing preventing Loffler from totally dominating this plot is of course, the stubborn and perpetually-perturbed Frank who wants to keep his jaguar intact and keep safe the handful of people he can even tolerate to be on the ship with him: Dr. Ellen Taylor, the engineer Scuddy (Sewell Whitney), the ship captain Morales (Braulio Castillo hijo), and his young son Rafael (Jeremy Nazario). 

Lots of bad things happen because of the snakes, the monkeys, and jaguar being allowed to roam freely. Life boats get destroyed or deployed by rebellious crew members, and lots of people get shot, stabbed, brutalized until only Frank’s handful (above) remain. There’s a betrayal and a secret, but ultimately all of this is just a lead up to Loffler and Frank fighting it out, knife-to-knife, fist-to-fist, and primal animal to primal animal. 

I’m sure you can imagine how it ends, so I won’t bore you with those details. Suffice it to say, there were a lot of things “wrong” with this film, but there was enough “right” about it, that I did enjoy myself and the viewing experience.

Body Count 

As I referenced above, for a non-war Cage film this one still had a pretty high body count. Coming off of Kill Chain you would think there might be a little less death, but no! Here’s a tally I took for how many died and by what means.

Total body count = ~14 people (2 parrots)

Mauled by monkeys = 1-2 people

Mauled by jaguar = 2 people

Killed by a poisonous snake bite = 0 (but almost one)

Stabbed to death = 1 person

Shot with gun = 9 people (2 parrots)

He’s Not Really A People Person OR An Animal Person

Frank is cranky about a lot of things. He doesn’t like sharing his boat with strangers. He gets mad when people suggest that jaguars are man eaters. Doesn’t particularly like it when the Brazilian truck driver won’t drive him and Frank’s “ghost cat” out of the jungle as agreed upon. He drinks to excess; he makes inappropriate comments to Dr. Taylor; he whines, bitches, and moans.

What’s funny to me though is that he’s a knowledgeable animal smuggler (and amateur zoologist) who also dislikes animals it seems. He explains to Rafi how an annoying parrot followed him out of the jungle and now won’t leave him alone. 

But as with most of Cage’s “rough on the outside” personas, he does have a good heart–way down deep. When Loffler threatens Frank (and the other reverse hostages) Frank seems unphased by it. Come fight me, he offers Loffler, but when Loffler starts shooting parrots and other birds, Frank loses his resolve. It’s as if he is being shot right in the heart, which I found quite humorous.

Don’t Think Too Hard

You might be tempted to think a little bit too hard about this film. But the harder you analyze even the most basic details of the plot, the more that none of it holds up to scrutiny. From the military doctor (whom I will always think of as her role as Jane Grey / Phoenix in the X-men) who needs to care for the despicable Loffler to “keep him alive”, to the pissed-off chef who gets mauled by monkeys, to Frank using a blow-dart gun when weapons seemed plentiful; each of these things don’t add up unless you turn off your brain.

I recommend turning off your brain for this one and just bask in the angry glow of Nicolas Cage and his animals. Rather than try to make sense of it, I’ll leave you with wayd too many quotes from the film itself.   

Firsts for Nicolas Cage as Frank Walsh

• Wearing an Indiana Jones style hat
• Hunting for wild animals
• In a tree stand, then falling from a tree stand
• Talking to a parrot
• Paying for a man to get his kid’s some (damn) shoes
• Shooting someone the Bird
• Impersonating Bugs Bunny
• Feeding a tapir chopped vegetables
• Using a blow dart gun
• Cage trapped inside a literal cage

Recurrences

• In South America (Running with the Devil, Kill Chain)
• Speaking pretty rough-sounding Spanish (Kill Chain)
• Has a drinking problem (Multiple)
• Smoking cigars (Multiple)
• Skilled at crossbow / archery (Outcast, The Weather Man)
• Reference to Sasquatch (National Treasure)

Quotables

“Oh, gorgeous.” [Speaking of a jaguar]

“Did somebody die?”

“Vamanos, amigo, we got a boat to catch.”

“Diego, diego, diego. I don’t know much about your myths and legends, but she is a white jag, she’s one of a kind, she’s worth a million bucks, and she is not, repeat NOT, a maneater. She’s a house on Pine Lake.” 

“Hey, are you kidding me, man! Get outta there.” [To a parrot eating his food.]

“Looking at a big fat lawsuit.”

“Take it easy with my CAT!!!”

“Oh, I get it. Silent but deadly huh?” [Not talking about what you think.]

“HEY. Who the fuck are you guys?”

“See you on the main deck. We can buddy up for the shuffleboard tournament.”

“Well, perhaps you should classifying this…” [shooting the bird at Freed]

“Why don’t you just fly his ass back?”

“I just spent 10 months in the jungle, and this all smells like cat shit to me.”

“I took ‘em with my blowpipe.”

“It’s not how you play the game; it’s whether or not you win.”

“A regular Einstein.”

“I have hit the mother lode.”

“I’m not going anywhere till I feed my animals.”

“Who knows how long it’s going to take THIS asshole to catch THAT asshole!” 

“I know how a FUCKING faucet works you federal clown!” 

“Our tax dollars at work you federal retards!”

“You kill my cat, I’ll blow your head off.” 

“I’m worse than an animal not worth saving. Blah. Blah. Blah.”

“Keep an eye out on that Sasquatch Mother Fucker.” 

“No, I’m no good. But I can hunt.”

“C’mon. You gotta hit a little harder than that, pussy.”

“I can’t seem to give a shit.”

Conclusion

Thus concludes Cage’s unofficial South American trilogy–at least for the foreseeable future in his chronology. We got the drug running in Running With the Devil, the mercenary assassin revenge story in Kill Chain, and now the animal smuggling turned hero in Primal. This is another one of those misfit / unlikely hero stories where Nic saves them all in the end–despite his best intentions to be dispassionate and self-serving.