Review of Raptor Island

Raptor Island (2004 TV Movie)
4/10
Bad, but not quite horrible
22 August 2004
I just watched this on Sci-Fi last night. It's about a group of Navy SEALS who are sent to rescue some sort of CIA operative from a ship, where she's being held by terrorists. Afterwards, the terrorists flee to some island, still with their prisoner, and the SEALS pursue. The SEALS get the CIA person back, but by then they've discovered that the island is overrun by raptors.

Much bad CGI and firing of ammo follows.

Actually, there is some good CGI in the movie, like when they're in the cave which is the "incubator" for the raptors. That looked pretty cool. But most of the raptors that are running around in the woods, well, they look a little worse than the ones in The Lost World TV show, and when the SEALS shoot at them and blood starts spurting out, it's straight out of a video game. You will not be able to stop laughing at some of those scenes. And the raptors just stand there, totally oblivious to the fact they're being shot. One of them takes about 50 rounds to the butt, which is really hilarious because you'd think he'd turn around and see what's going on back there, but he doesn't.

Another thing that's annoying is that the SEALS suffer from a complete and utter lack of peripheral vision. A terrorist can be crouched behind a small tree as a soldier walks by, then the camera pans down and you see the terrorist, and realize there's no possible way that the soldier could have not noticed him. And, since they chose to call these guys SEALS, which makes one think they're highly trained, why do they never aim their weapons at anything? A raptor can be right in front of them and instead of aiming at it, they spray rounds back and forth in a wide arc.

The whole movie is full of such silliness. After being instructed to conserve their ammo, they fire an extra fifty rounds into a raptor that's already dead. It's all this inattention to detail that makes it abundantly clear throughout the film that you're not watching a "real" movie.

But, the last one minute of the movie almost makes it worth it. Some pretty cool CGI, and the best line of the whole movie is the last one.
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