Jurassic World: Rebirth: It's deja vu all over again

Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence, bloody images, mild profanity and a fleeting drug reference

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.6.25

The formula is tried and true, and this sci-fi thriller is a heckuva rollercoaster ride for those who’ve never seen more than one or two previous franchise entries.

 

Teresa (Luna Blaise, foreground) cautiously approaches a deserted supply pod, while
her companions — from left, Isabella (Audrina Miranda), Reuben (Manuel
Garcia-Rulfo) and Xavier (Davis Iacono) — wait with mounting anxiety.

(During one well-staged moment of peril, at Monday evening’s Sacramento preview screening, I feared the woman seated in front of us would have a heart attack. I’ve never heard anybody shriek so loud, or for so long, in a movie theater.)

As I noted, when reviewing 2018’s Fallen Kingdom, the essential elements never change:

 

Stalwart heroes: check. Well-meaning scientist(s) with ideals shattered: check. A soulless corporate villain: check. One (and only one) comic relief character: check. A child — or children — in peril: check.

 

Plenty of unexpected appearances and jump-attacks by swiftly moving dinosaurs: check-check-check.

 

All that said...

 

I have seen all six previous entries, and the formula has become trite to the point of cliché. Scripter David Koepp, generally a solid and skilled writer, took the paycheck and phoned this one in. Every step of this film feels like an inferior remake of 1993’s franchise-spawning first film, which had the strong benefit of having been adapted from Michael Crichton’s page-turning novel.

 

Alas, several of the characters here are wafer-thin, to the point where it’s easy to predict who will become dino chow, and who will survive. Indeed, given the amount of initial screen time, personality and back-story granted each of the 11 key players, I also nailed the order in which they’d perish. That’s just sloppy writing.

 

Half the time I was rooting for the dinosaurs...

 

In fairness, though, director Gareth Edwards, editor Jabez Olssen and the amazing special-effects team do a masterful job of generating the most excitement possible. The primary cast members, and their likable performances, make it easier to forgive the script’s shortcomings.

 

To cases:

 

A brief prologue reveals that a new crop of bunny-suited InGen scientists and genetic engineers, having learned nothing from previous catastrophes, continues to stubbornly develop ever-more-dangerous hybrid dinosaurs. Big surprise: Something goes awry.

 

Greyhound: A suspenseful sprint

Greyhound (2020) • View trailer 

Four stars. Rated PG-13, for war-related action, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.14.20

It’s a shame grim, real-world events kept this film from traditional theatrical release, because it would’ve been a breath-held, edge-of-the-seat nail-biter.

Krause (Tom Hanks) constantly worries that his inexperience as a wartime
 commander may not be up to the challenge of safeguarding the 37 convoy ships
 under his care.

Although certainly just as suspenseful when viewed at home — via its sole release on Apple TV — director Aaron Schneider’s Greyhound definitely isn’t as intense. Agitated viewers might even hit “pause” on occasion, to quell racing hearts, and you certainly can’t get such relief in a movie theater (which is as it should be).

 

Schneider’s approach is a clever blend of old-school “dire odds” war drama — in the mold of 1961’s The Guns of Navarone and 1968’s Where Eagles Dare — augmented by up-to-the-minute CGI effects. The pacing is taut; Schneider and editors Mark Czyzewski and Sidney Wolinsky don’t waste a second of this crisp 91-minute thriller, which gets the job done and then gets off the stage.

 

Schneider, a veteran cinematographer-turned-director, also has an unerring sense of camera placement, and the careful use of tight close-ups to heighten the drama. Star Tom Hanks has long been adept at taking advantage of such moments; he’s far better than most, at the nuance of wordless concern, flashes of doubt, and grim resolve.

 

Hanks also chooses his projects with care; he’s even more prudent with the ones he elects to script. This is only his third feature writing credit — after 1996’s That Thing You Do and 2011’s Larry Crowne — and his first adaptation. Greyhound is based on popular nautical author C.S. Forester’s 1955 naval thriller, The Good Shepherd, and Hanks’ approach is quite faithful (if unable to match, in such condensed form, the character depth found within the 322-page novel).

 

At the risk of stating the obvious, Forester’s title is far superior — and symbolically apt — than Greyhound. I cannot imagine what Hanks and Sony were thinking.

 

The year is early 1942, a few months after the United States has officially entered World War II. Allied UK forces and the Soviet Union are in constant need of supplies, which must be delivered by sea convoys via the Atlantic Ocean. But the route is patrolled constantly by German U-boats; the most dangerous region is the mid-Atlantic gap dubbed the “black pit,” where ships are out of range of protective air cover.