Kong: Skull Island Review
The king is back! Well, actually not quite, not even the title acknowledges that Kong has achieved king status yet. Well, anyways, the new Kong film, of course, doesn’t stand up to the original King Kong (1933), or even the Peter Jackson remake from 2005, but instead of being a kind of self-serious monster movie about what happens when a beast from an island untouched by man comes in contact with both his human enemies and human friends, but unlike those two films, this one is set exclusively on Skull Island, and we don’t have to deal with his terrorizing an urban city, at least not yet.
So the story is an easy one to guess if you see the trailers: a team of military personnel and scientists make a journey to the untouched Skull Island, and within minutes of arriving drop geological bombs to map out the island. That goes well, because another minute later Kong appears, and he ain’t happy with all this activity. After a majority of the invaders are killed, the survivors have to band together and try to survive the hungry creatures, natives, and of course Kong as they trek to the north end of the island, where a recovery team will be meeting them soon.
So there are a few positives to talk about. First off, the film is directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, most famous for The Kings of Summer (2014), which I haven’t seen but have heard nothing but great reviews for, has a good eye for the big-budget films. He knows how to make things cinematic. You get the sense of Apocalypse Now (1979) with all the helicopters and the Vietnam-era setting, and with that a sense of camaraderie from the soldiers akin to Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), but there’s also a bit of Platoon (1986) in there, too…ah hell, name almost any Vietnam-set movie and I’ll say it also feels like that. So more than knowing of other films set in this era to rip-off or pay homage to, Vogt-Roberts also makes the monster battles, and there’s a number of them, exciting to watch and differentiates all of them so it doesn’t just feel like they’re recycling the same fight moves or same monsters. There’s a wide variety of creature designs and types, which is also a strength: there’s a number of creatures that are very unique looking that make this one stand out from other monster mash films in the past. I’ll get into this in my negatives, but the cast is a great one, but only a few performances and characters stand out. One of them is John C. Reilly as a WWII vet who was shot down and has been on the island since 1944. His knowledge of the creatures serves its purpose as the exposition character, and he pulls double-duty as the comedic relief character, and as we’ve seen before, Reilly knows how to be funny, and for the most part his humorous moments were the highlights of the non-action scenes. The visual effects were also well-done, especially on Kong, who arguably looks better than he ever has. Also good is the early 70’s soundtrack, from Creedence Clearwater Revival to The Hollies, they don’t miss a beat.
Now for a few complaints. As I mentioned, the cast is a solid one, but aside from Reilly, there’s really no stand-out performances. In particular, Tom Hiddleston as the macho tracker was a bore, Samuel L. Jackson played it so by the numbers you could pull his lines from any of his other performances, Brie Larson was satisfactory as the photographer/sort-of damsel in distress, and John Goodman was your stock instigator who knows too much and who really is to blame for all the lives lost. It’s not that the actors are giving bad performances, there’s just nothing there in the script for them to work with, surprisingly, even though Academy Award-nominated writers Dan Gilroy and John Gatins contributed. But then again, the movie’s going for that 50’s B-Movie jungle expedition feel, so there’s only so much you can do with the script, but still with these two guys among the writers, you’d think they would have more to offer. Also the film gets off to a slow start. While I understand they’re trying to set up characters we ultimately don’t really care about, does it really need to take over half-an-hour before we get to the island? Now I’m in the rare crowd in regards to the 2005 version of Kong: I actually enjoy the early scenes on the boat, but after a while the island scenes start to bore me. I’m down for getting to know characters and getting pumped up for the reveal of the island and the opening action scene with Kong, but still at least I cared about Ann, Jack, and Carl, to some degree, in Jackson’s remake whereas here I didn’t really feel for anybody until Reilly is introduced almost an hour into the film. That’s a wrong in my book. Also, not to spoil anything, but for a movie that has Kong in the title, there’s less of him than I’d like. I think the better title would been just to call it Skull Island.
Well, what else can I say? These type of monster movies aren’t my go-to genre, and they really do have to have a lot of great elements or outside-the-box thinking to impress me, and while this is nothing groundbreaking in the genre, it is an improvement over Godzilla (2014), which I didn’t like very much until the last ten minutes, but by then it was too little too late. There’s just enough here to get me through the slower scenes and boring characters, for the most part, with great creatures designs, good fight scenes, and solid pace, I didn’t mention that before, but yes I was involved with the film the whole time, not constantly looking at my watch trying to figure out when I can go home. Kong may not be king yet, but all royalty have to start somewhere.
My rating: 6/10.
