Kong: Skull Island review
(Apologies everyone, I forgot to post this up to Movie-Blogger.com for two days.)
Kong: Skull Island is what I think I want every monster movie to be at its most fundamental level. We’ve had some pretty good Kaiju and monster movies over the past few years – I mean Pacific Rim was pretty awesome and the 2014 Godzilla was at least 1/3rd of a good movie (albeit, a good monster movie trapped underneath an extremely boring story and characters). But anyway, for my money, Kong: Skull Island tops all of them. It’s a deliriously enjoyable monster-movie romp, a wonderful taste of what’s hopefully to come from Warner Bros. latest attempt to build a cinematic universe, and just about the best summer blockbuster you’re gonna see in March.
(And for anyone who is curious, I did see Logan last week and thought it was pretty good, but sometimes you just wanna write about the fun stuff.)
If there is a flaw with Kong: Skull Island it’s that it feels like it has the opposite problem of 2014’s Godzilla and Peter Jackson’s King Kong from 2005. Whereas those movies ended up almost collapsing under the weight of their own ambition, with occasional moments of brilliant action speckled in, Kong: Skull Island purposefully aims to just be a bunch of schlocky fun and not much else. Now as far as I’m concerned that’s not a problem at all; if you wanna just be a monster movie, by all means be just a monster movie. If you were expecting the Vietnam setting to be used to great cinematic effect outside of a bunch of visual homages to Apocalypse Now and a catchy soundtrack, you may end up being disappointed. I mean it’s probably literally impossible to make a movie set during Vietnam and not have something to say about it, but that’s not where the movie’s priorities are. It’s not completely unnecessary, and Samuel L. Jackson’s villain character probably gets the most mileage out of the movie because of it, but expect a monster movie first, everything else second.
Still, as lightweight as the movie is most of the time, there’s not really a flat element at play here. This is all down to a pretty excellent little script coming to us courtesy of Nightcrawler writer/director Dan Gilroy. The characters are all fun and well-rounded, there are no unforgivable leaps of logic or frustratingly forced moments, and it all wraps itself up nicely in about two hours. It’s a beautifully shot and well directed movie, too. Jordan Vogt-Roberts hasn’t been on my radar at all before now, and he’s tied with Jordan Peele for most impressive major-studio directorial debut. It’s popping with color and the world feels authentic and lived in. For my money it’s the most visually appealing movie I’ve seen so far this year.
And lastly just…woah. When everything starts hitting the fan about twenty-five minutes into the movie, it’s some of the best monster movie action ever put to screen. Calling this The Raid or the Fury Road of Kaiju movies probably isn’t too much of an overstatement. There isn’t a thing about the movie’s numerous set-pieces I didn’t love. It’s just too good.
If this had come out when I was eight or nine, it would’ve been my favorite movie ever. Consider this another win for what has so far been a stellar opening to 2017, and I hope we can keep up the hot-streak.
The Media Fire gives this movie 8.7/10
