Review: GODZILLA (2014)

GODZILLA  (SCI-FI/ACTION-THRILLER) 
2.5 out 4 stars
Directed by Gareth Edwards
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watnabe, Elizabeth Olsen, David Strathairn, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, Carson Bolde
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence.
Verdict: After so many numbingly bombastic brawn-over-brain summer blockbusters in recent years, Gareth Edwards' GODZILLA turns such notions on their heads with the least-likely material, and yet, ironically, GODZILLA's human interests and coy manner are often its greatest weaknesses.  Although I'd be very interested to know what GODZILLA die-hards think, this reboot often feels more admirable than entertaining.
YOU MAY ENJOY GODZILLA IF YOU LIKED:
GOJIRA (GODZILLA) (1954)
MONSTERS (2010)
PACIFIC RIM (2013)
KICK-ASS (2010)
INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

Prior to GODZILLA, director Gareth Edwards' sole feature film was his 2010 debut, MONSTERS, an extremely low-budget independent creature feature about a journalist escorting his employer's daughter through an alien-infested, walled-off Mexico into the United States in a sly but necessarily slow allegorical thriller.  Despite featuring several short moments of CGI visual effects of the sort more typical of a Hollywood film, Edwards filmed on inexpensive digital cameras and acted as director, writer, storyboard man, cinematographer, production designer and visual effects artist (created on his laptop) to turn in a science fiction creature feature on a budget of only $500,000 (for reference, the low-budget 2004 independent comedy NAPOLEON DYNAMITE cost $400,000).  With the success of MONSTERS, Legendary Pictures, in association with Warner Brothers, gave Edwards the reins to a $160 million brand-name blockbuster in GODZILLA.
Even with the 320% budget increase, Edwards remains conservative about his money shots, which is typically a good thing, and undoubtedly admirable, but sometimes it's just too cruel.  The titular King of Monsters is the final plot point, major or minor, to be established in the film's first half!  That actually shouldn't be that much of a problem, except that once he does show up, he's always more interesting than what's going on with the already established human characters whose stories must be carried through to fruition.  Much about Edwards' approach to GODZILLA is entirely admirable, while not altogether successful.
The drama begins when a nuclear physicist (Bryan Cranston) is studying suspicious seismic activity in Japan that leads to a devastating nuclear plant explosion, but when authorities label it a natural disaster, the physicist becomes obsessed with proving otherwise, and thus estranging himself from his son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).  Fifteen years later, the son is an explosives technician for the U.S. Army and lives with his wife and child (Elizabeth Olsen and Carson Bolde, respectively), but escalating events in Japan reunite the father and son as prehistoric monstrosities threaten full-blown global devastation.
The advertising has been marvelously secretive about much else of the major plot elemens, and I'm not about to ruin it for you.
Godzilla himself is depicted in true reverence, a massive and elaborate CGI rendering of the iconic and occasionally ridiculed design from the Japanese films, and I can only imagine the roaring cheers of delighted Godzilla fans at their equivalent of THE AVENGERS-style "nerd-gasms" when each of the King of Monsters' trademarks get exuberant payoffs.

For better or worse though, Edwards' execution regularly teases so much more than is ultimately shown, cutting from the monster action just as things are getting really awesome.  It's nerve-wracking.  It's ironic, especially after the likes of last summer's Warner Brothers/Legendary offerings MAN OF STEEL, which took another iconic character and, ignoring his legacy, dealt out an excess of senses-dulling destruction and bombast without regard for restraint; and PACIFIC RIM, which dealt out the awesome money shots in droves, but came up short in the human department.  Now GODZILLA is in almost complete contrast to those films, focusing very heavily on the human stories, but the humans are never quite as interesting as the monsters.  Most of the film is carried by Taylor-Johnson, who is adequate, but not the same level as his co-stars, including Olsen, who'll appear alongside him in next year's THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, in which they'll play siblings Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch (Taylor-Johnson and Olsen, respectively).
The creature effects and animation are astounding, taking traditional B-movie designs and rendering them with realistic detail and impressive emotion; I'm inclined to think that they could have carried much more of the film.
On the whole, I'm still a little confused about what to think of this movie.  Watching it, I was only occasionally entertained, while much of the time, all I wanted was to see more of the monsters, which Edwards would constantly tease with brief moments of action before cutting away just as things get really fun.  When I think about it though, most of it seems to be what we've been clamoring for all along- a smart, restrained and respectful action-fantasy.  It's just a bit slower than I would have liked.  I'm very interested, however, to learn what Godzilla fans think.