Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I agree with our spy, Arnie Bragg, about his thoughts on WOLF CREEK. Some of it doesn't work, but what John Jarratt brings to the film pushes it to being a winner in my book.

That said, if a movie has a giant crocodile or alligator in it then I will see it and 99 times out of 100 I will like it. I don't know why, but the sub-sub-genre of giant man-eating crocs or gators revs my motor. It's probably some off-shoot of my love of JAWS.

Anyway, I'm really excited to see this one and Mr. Bragg below tells me I might be putting my trust in the right place. Enjoy the fairly spoiler-free review!!!

Hi all, Arnie Bragg again.

Last night I had the pleasure of an invite to the world premiere of new Aussie monster croc movie Rogue - Greg McLean's follow-up to Wolf Creek

The screening was held in Darwin, the capital of Australia's northern Territory, where much of the film was shot. It was screened at our beautiful outdoor Deckchair Cinema before a packed audience of a few hundred locals. In attendence were McLean, some producer types and stars John Jarratt and Stephen Curry (although I didn't personally see Curry, just heard he was there)

I wasn't a huge Wolf Creek fan, I loved parts of it (mostly Jarrett's spine-chilling performance) but I though there were a few clumsy plot devices and some sketchy characters that kind of undermined the picture. I enjoyed Rogue much more, and I think McLean shows that he is maturing as a filmmaker with this second feature…

I'll give you a few hopefully spoiler-free impressions of the film…

First off, it is beautifully filmed, using many of the Territory's spectacular landscapes that we locals seem to forget are just a few hours from home. It made me homesick, even though I'm here…

To counter claims the film will scare off tourists by playing up the croc threat, McLean has said it is a $30 million ad for the Territory _ and he is pretty spot on. Sweeping escarpments, picturesque billabongs, wildlife … it's all there…

The opening scenes have a distinctive flavour of another Aussie "monster animal" classic Razorback, about a giant pig!. A lot of Aussie films play on this notion that the Outback is a weird and dangerous place (which it kind of is)… but these films have a certain "feel" about them… usually conveyed by a low electric "buzzing fly" kind of noise laid under the soundtrack…

Michael Vartan is Pete McKell, an American travel writer who seems to be the only person getting off a bus to take a crocodile tour for a piece on travelling in the Territory – his normal stock and trade is hotel reviews so he's not overly impressed.

After a straight-out-of-Razorback exchange at the local pub, complete with a wall filled with articles from our croc-loving local newspaper the Northern Territory News about killer crocs, he heads down to the tour boat.

There he meets tour guide Kate Ryan (Rhada Mitchell), who has never been out of the Territory (or the Terrortory, as the films poster loving calls it). Enter a menagerie of tourists _ including an almost unrecogniseable John Jarrett as a dorky widower, the very funny Simon (Stephen Curry from The Castle) a keen photographer who fancies himself as a bit of a ladies man, an upper class British couple with a teenage daughter, an American couple and a friendly but ignorant Scottish backpacker and Kate's beloved dog Kevin. Meanwhile they run into a couple of loutish locals (including Sam Worthington) on their tour.

Each of these tourists has a back story that is played out to give them some dimension, but it is really pared back so as not to take away from the point of this film – the big, angry, man-eating croc.

The crux of the tale is they head up the river on a croc tour. At the end of the tour they spot a distress flare and head up river to see if anyone needs rescuing _ but they only find a sinking fishing boat. They have unwittingly stumbled into the territory of a rogue crocodile – the term used for very aggressive saltwater crocodiles. Basically the croc attacks their boat _ an unusual but not unheard of event here in the Top End (we had one big 16-foot croc called Sweetheart who apparently hated the sound of an outboard motor and gladly let fishermen know about it). The boat starts to sink so they manage to make it to an island – but the radio is playing up in the high-walled gorge … the river is tidal, so the island is slowly disappearing … and it's getting dark…. crocs love to attack things on the banks of rivers, as seen in the excellent opening sequence… you get the picture…

There are some great scares, and a few excellent set pieces. The scenes with the rope were really well crafted, building the suspense nicely. There are also some very funny moments in this film. It has an irreverent humour _ kind of like Peter Jackson's earlier films (Braindead/Dead Alive or Bad Taste spring to mind). The scene when they are looking for bait to "trap" the croc is great, very funny and the audience will squirm with delight or discomfort.

Part of the problem for this film is that the 7m croc is the money shot, so you don't see it for quite some time. As a result, the early attacks on the tourists seem a little anticlimactic. That said the croc is pretty good. Mostly CGI, they have done a pretty good job of capturing the movements and behaviours of big crocs. No clunky robots here or snakes that move faster than lightning here… this croc is doing pretty much what I've seen crocs doing all my life… just more aggressively…

Also, I think the film failed to create enough empathy for the characters … basically I didn't actually care what happened to them. Others in the audience, however, clearly did. It was a very vocal screening – just like you'd expect from a good 70's style monster animal flick. So maybe it's just me…

The great thing about this film is that _ like Jaws _ it's not a completely unbelievable scenario. Sure the croc is slightly bigger than usual (crocs usually don't get much bigger than 6m … but that's still bloody huge considering a 2m croc is big enough to eat a person). There is also some dramatic licence taken here and there, but it's a movie! The length is perfect. I'm guessing about 90 minutes, so there is not a lot of fat on it…

It's not as scary, violent or shocking as Wolf Creek .. but it is a very different film. Where Wolf Creek relied too heavily on the fears of women IMO… Rogue targets the instinctive fears of all humans. Crocodiles are beautifully frightening looking prehistoric beasts, one of those creatures that if you stumbled upon one in complete ignorance of their existence, you'll still be scared… so in that sense it works…

I had a lot of fun watching it, and I think people will really enjoy it. It's not out until November I don't think and I heard it's opening on 1500 screens in the US. Given the reputation of the Weinsteins, who own the US rights, I am curious to see if they tinker with the film at all, just to beef up the emotion maybe…

It was good to see the film premiere here in Darwin. It's a small town of about 100,000 so we don't see much of this action here. There is a bit of a push on to get Baz Luhrmann to premiere Australia here (unlikely but cool idea). Large parts of it are set in and around the WWII bombing of Darwin in the 1940s and they filmed a few weeks worth of stuff here at the wharf (which was bombed in the Japanese raids). It caused quite a stir having Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in town :)

Cheers

Arnie Bragg