A tourist river tour in the Australian Outback lead by Kate Ryan (Radha Mitchell) goes pear-shaped when the boatload of tourists (among them non-adventurous travel writer Michael Vartan) follows a distress flair right into the territory of a Big Damn Crocodile.
Said crocodile is quite happy about having so many tasty looking snacks in jaw-reach and goes to work, leaving the soon boatless group stranded on a river bank and struggling for survival.
Rogue was directed by Greg Mclean whose previous film Wolf Creek was one in the seemingly endless chain of spam in a cabin films, although a nearly good one of that sub-genre if not for a certain disregard for the basics of logic and a tendency to lovingly hang onto a little too much of the "generic" part of the word "genre".
In a sense, Rogue shares this problem. The film is hitting every expected beat in the sort of survival story its telling, from the asshat locals to the woman willing to die if only her daughter can be saved etc etc. Much to my surprise I wasn't as annoyed about this as I was when watching Wolf Creek, mostly thanks to Mcleans very fine sense of timing and pacing combined with a real determination to not let the movie be slogged down by too much soap operatics.
The grand finale is especially tense, gifting the viewer with the best fight between Man and Damn Big Crocodile I've ever seen. It's just too bad the "Man" here has to be male. I see no good reason for making Michael Vartan's travel writer (you know, a guy without any survival experience) the final hero of the peace when Radha Mitchell's tour guide is supposed to have actual Outback experience - except for a nearly neurotic need to fulfill the "generic" part again.
Still, this is a very entertaining movie and I am now officially waiting for Mclean's future features (possibly even with some of this "subverting expectations" stuff one hears so much about nowadays?).
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