Back when I was a kid in kindergarten, we always used to sing a song about a crocodile named Sophie and, according to the lyrics, her jaws were never closed because she always gossiped about the rest of the animal kingdom. Well now, the croc in "Primeval" answers to the name Gustave and his jaws are never closed neither, but for a completely different reason. Since the beginning of time, he reigns over the swamps & rivers in the poorest regions of Burundi and he supposedly devoured over 300 people already. Gustave normally just feeds on locals, so nobody in the Western world cares whether he lives or dies, but he now made the terrible mistake of eating a female white reporter and his quiet and peaceful days of over for good. A prominent American newspaper sends out an expedition, complete with reporters, local guides and a professional crocodile hunter, to capture Gustave alive. "Primeval" only just came out a couple of months ago, but it already earned itself a spot in IMDb's bottom 100 and receives one harshly negative review after the other. Quite undeservedly if you ask me, because it really isn't such a terrible movie and even benefices from a handful of good aspects, like a solid cast and engaging CGI-monster effects. The scriptwriters simply made one incomprehensible and unforgivable mistake! Why on earth did John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris had the ambition to use the premise of a low-brained monster feature to alert us about the disastrous political situation in Southern Africa? There's a 25-foot-long crocodile running amok and yet this movie mainly criticizes how the Western world shamelessly turned its back on the poverty & civil war issues in Burundi. If they wanted to make a harrowing and insightful follow-up to "Hotel Rwanda" that's perfect by me, but please don't pretend it's a non-stop gory and exciting creature-feature! It's like the characters in the film say themselves: nobody cares about politics as long as there's a croc involved! Mixing big-animal-horror with political drama topics, as well as the supposedly heart-breaking sub plot revolving on an African adolescent who'd do everything (literally EVERYTHING!) to enter the USA, is probably Hollywood's worst spontaneous decision to date, and it's really no surprise the pubic hates this movie for it. If "Primeval" simply had focused on the bloody crocodile-hunting mission, everything would have been a-okay and it definitely would have ranked on the list of above average monster films. All the necessary ingredients and stereotype characters to make a delightfully cheesy and entertaining creature feature are present. The crew exists of a reluctant reporter who considers his trip to Burundi as a punishment for ruining a previous assignment, a new and ambitious female reporter who desperately wants to prove herself, the 'token-black-guy' cameraman, the overly self-confident expert who thinks he's even better than Steve Irwin (RIP) and of course the introvert guide who has a personal score to settle with Gustave. Director Michael Katleman patiently waits a good 45 minutes before properly showing the crocodile  and hence effectively builds up tension  and it has to be said the animal looks very impressive. Gustave is big, but not over-the-top big, and he looks genuinely menacing when speeding through the swamps and destroying cages of solid steel. But then, completely out of the blue, the cameraman accidentally witnesses a political execution in the middle of nowhere and suddenly the Americans have to flee from local crime-networks instead of from Gustave. The sudden change in tone & message is impossible to cope with and the rest of the film is giant disaster. Not even the fairly spectacular finale can undo the damage. The cast is good, with Dominic Purcell ("Prison Break"), Brooke Langton ("The Replacements"), Orlando Jones ("Evolution") and a typical supportive role for B-movie veteran Jürgen Prochnow.