Review | Rogue movie review: Megan Fox plays action heroine fighting a CGI lion in silly animal attack thriller
- Fox, who plays a marine-turned-mercenary, gives it her all, but it’s hard to believe that her battle-hardened character even cleared basic training
- At its heart, Rogue is an animal attack movie – think Predator on the plains – but without the budget or effects work to get the job done right
2/5 stars
In her new movie Rogue, Fox plays a marine-turned-mercenary, in command of a squad of grizzled combat veterans who regularly risk life and limb to make a quick buck. The actress gives it her all, but it’s hard to believe that her battle-hardened character, Sam O’Hara, even cleared basic training.
What’s worse, Fox is far from being the least convincing component of M.J. Bassett’s film – the script is poorly written and the whole enterprise is a jumble of action-movie clichés, tin-eared virtue signalling, and low-quality computer-generated mayhem. At its heart, Rogue is an animal attack movie – think Predator on the plains, or Alien with a lion – but without the budget, shrewd characterisation, or proficient effects work to get the job done right.
In an unspecified sub-Saharan nation, O’Hara and her band of world-weary mercenaries drop in to rescue Asilia (Jessica Sutton), the daughter of a local governor, from a gang of Islamic terrorists. When they miss their pickup, they are forced to hole up in an abandoned farmhouse, where a scarred and deeply resentful lioness is prowling the compound.
With slicker production values, Rogue could have been an entertaining, no-nonsense grunts versus growls shoot-’em-up. Sadly, Bassett’s screenplay, co-written by her daughter Isabel, who also appears as Asilia’s annoying classmate and fellow hostage, repeatedly trips the film up with its lofty ambitions.
Few will remember On Deadly Ground, Steven Seagal’s failed attempt to fold an environmental message into a bland mid-1990s action movie. With its wooden performances and clunky dialogue, the Bassetts’ effort to skewer wild-animal poachers and lion farmers falls similarly flat.
One minute the teenage hostages are helpless victims, the next minute unwanted baggage, and in turn vengeful psychopaths – and none of this with a whiff of authentic motivation. Similarly, O’Hara’s team are by turns loyal, insubordinate, proficient, and implausibly stupid as they lurch towards their inevitable mauling.
The lion has the film’s most clearly realised character arc – it is first maimed by poachers, then separated from its infant cubs.
Had the film’s budget stretched beyond an occasional sandy smudge flashing across the screen, Rogue might have stood a chance of fulfilling its greater purpose. As is, a sultry pout from a perpetually grubby Fox is about all it can muster.
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