Primitive War review – it’s Green Berets vs dinosaurs in cheerfully cheesy Vietnam war gorefest

Set to an on-the-nose soundtrack of Creedence Clearwater, an elite squad of soldiers are suitably unprepared for their large-toothed assailants in this jungle thriller Aimed squarely and unabashedly at viewers who love soldiers, gore and dinosaurs – as well as dinosaurs goring soldiers – this adaptation of Ethan Pettus’s 2017 novel is deeply repetitive but weirdly watchable. Although shot in Australia with a mostly Australian cast sprinkled with a few American actors, it’s supposed to be set in Vietnam in the late 1960s as the US armed forces take on the Viet Cong. But there are other forces to contend with, and we don’t just mean covert Chinese or Soviet operatives, although the latter do feature significantly here. It turns out a nefarious scientific experiment by one of the aforementioned factions has accidentally ushered a whole army of dinosaurs into the jungle and they’ve begun gaily munching their way through anyone who gets in their way. When one squad of Green Berets go miss...

Yodha review – bone-crunching patriotism on display in adrenaline-fuelled thriller

Sidharth Malhotra fights like a machine in an Indian action film cut from similar cloth as the jingoistic Rambo series

Depending on your age and perspective, you may or may not have fond memories of the three Rambo films. Where the first one was rather circumspect about America’s role in Vietnam, the sequels went all in on a might-is-right jingoism that combined adrenaline-infused action, rippling muscles and improbable set pieces with deeply queasy politics. New Hindi action-movie Yodha is cut from similar cloth.

We’re introduced to our hero, Arun (Sidharth Malhotra) as a young boy who worships his soldier father, who is then promptly killed leaving some big Freudian boots to fill. Arun vows he will either live to be worthy of wearing the uniform of his dad’s badass task force, the “Yodha” of the title, or else his “corpse will be wrapped in our flag”. Many bone-crunching displays of patriotism follow over the subsequent two hours. These are facilitated by Arun’s ability to fight like an absolute machine, and also practically teleport himself, popping up wherever the bad guys don’t want him to be.

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