A movie such as the romp ’em, chomp ’em Uncaged exists for one reason and one reason only: to entertain folks for a few hours. Sure, movies like this might try to sneak in a comment or two about the environment, global warming, or animal rights, but the real underlying purpose of a genre piece like Uncaged is to entertain. And if the litmus test for determining the success of a film is whether or not it fulfills its intended purpose, whatever that may be, then Uncaged comes through beautifully. This film is a blast!
“…an enormous and hungry lion is loose and causing bloody mayhem in and around the streets of Amsterdam.”
All you need to know about the plot is that an enormous and hungry lion is loose and causing bloody mayhem in and around the streets of Amsterdam. It’s up to zoo veterinarian Lizzy (Sophie van Winden), Lizzy’s friend with benefits and resourceful news cameraman, Dave (Julian Looman), nebbish police investigator Brinkers (Rienus Krul), and Lizzy’s wildly eccentric British ex-boyfriend and celebrated lion hunter, Jack De La Rue (Mark Frost), to track down and tame the mad beast.
Uncaged belongs to a heritage of “nature gone loco” movies such as Anaconda, Lake Placid, or the recent Crawl (the director of which, Alexandre Aja, would love this movie) that focuses on an “insert wild animal” that, for whatever reason, is very pissed at humans. Naturally, no casual filmgoer would ever confuse a movie like Uncaged or any of its brethren with a prestige picture, but this type of flick, a B-movie by design, isn’t meant to resemble anything nearing prestige. This movie is engineered to take a viewer on a mindless thrill ride for two hours.
"…this film is a blast!"
