Review: "Crocodile 2: Death Roll"
Sometimes you go into a movie with wild expectations. Sometimes you think a movie about one large lizard is a sequel to an entirely different film...
In a nondescript city, people go about their day in a busy bank. Money is exchanged, as well as pleasantries to familiar faces. Suddenly, the bank is invaded by masked men, armed with large guns, all screaming orders violently at the patrons. In a flash, the safe is opened and emptied. While this is a scary situation, no doubt, it only takes a moment to get far worse. Police are firing at the criminals. Criminals are firing at the police, and the innocent people in the bank are caught in the middle.
Two flight attendants are making their way through a bustling airport on the way to their next flight. One stops to open a package their boyfriend left them, discovering a silver engraved lighter. She calls her boyfriend to thank him and let him know she is on her way to meet him in Mexico. They board and take off with relative ease. The only problem is that there is a group of bank robbers on the run on this flight. They are desperate to get out of the US, and when weather threatens to turn them back, they decide to hijack the plane.
Amazingly, this is the opening to Crocodile 2: Death Roll or Death Swamp. It is a full THIRTY MINUTES before the movie actually involves any kind of standing water. I kept watching, but the entire time I was thinking I was watching the wrong movie. The irony is that I actually WAS watching the wrong movie. I thought that I was watching the sequel to a film I watched a couple of years ago. That film, however, was Alligator and NOT Crocodile.
Anyway, Crocodile 2 was made in the early 2000s, and I have zero context (currently) on the world that it might exist in, in relation to the first film. For what it is, and given my lack of context, it's an okay CGI monster movie. It takes itself far more seriously than it probably should, but ... it's fine. The cast is all unknown or d-tier character actors, save one standout exception, Martin "Cobra Kai" Kove. He chews through all his scenes with the same zeal he always does. Once he popped up, I was bored in every scene he wasn't in.
There is plenty of blood, lots of shooting, and an amazing number of f-bombs dropped. The combination of CG and rubber Crocs in the film is maybe surprisingly well done. For a creature feature, it's perfectly serviceable. I would probably watch it again if it were on a late-night show.
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