If you are familiar with David E. Kelley's television dramas ("Ally McBeal," "The Practice," "Picket Fences," "Chicago Hope" you know he likes to sneak in spiritual themes in people and places where we'd least expect them to be found. This witty thriller, which Kelley wrote, could be seen as an extended meditation on a comment by Indian guru Sri Aurobindo: When he was bitten by a scorpion, he said: "Ah, a message from my Beloved." This time the one doing the biting is a crocodile, which, as Kelley's literate screenplay informs us, is a being regarded to have divine attributes in many cultures.
When the tooth of some large reptile is extracted from the half-eaten body of a man pulled out of a lake in Maine, New York City paleontologist Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda) is dispatched to the scene. Already investigating the incident are Sheriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson) and the fish and game warden Jack Wells (Bill Pullman). The vicious predator turns out to be a 30-foot Asian crocodile that has somehow found its way to the lake. What's more, Mrs. Delores Bickerman (Betty White), a widow, has been feeding it for six years.
While sentiment among the investigators runs high for blowing the crocodile's head off, Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt), a wealthy and idiosyncratic mythology professor, has another idea. As a lover of crocodiles who sees them as sacred, he wants to capture and preserve the creature. Meanwhile, the animal's presence draws out the shadow sides of the four lead characters who vociferously contend with each other about just about everything. Steve Miner directs this shaggy-dog movie that wonderfully reveals the strange and the wondrous in all of God's creations.