Review: KONG: SKULL ISLAND

KONG: SKULL ISLAND 
(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY) 
★★★
Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman, Corey Hawkins, John Ortiz, Tian Jing, Toby Kebbell, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, Eugene Cordero, Marc Evan Jackson, Terry Notary
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for brief strong language.
120 minutes
Verdict: It's frenetic and more than a little mean-spirited, but delivers enough on spectacle and sheer entertainment value to be marginally more than passable piece of monster mayhem.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN KONG: SKULL ISLAND IF YOU LIKED:
GODZILLA  (2014)
THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK  (1998)
KING KONG  (2005)
KING KONG  (1976) 
THE INCREDIBLE HULK  (2008)

Unlike Peter Jackson's awe-inspiring and bloated three-hour hybrid of character-driven art house horror and spectacular blockbuster action-adventure from 12 years ago, Legendary Pictures's new iteration of Kong has no apparent aspirations of serious cinematic importance on the level of Merian C. Cooper's 1933 original creature feature classic.  Planned as part of cinematic "MonsterVerse", following up the 2014 remake/reboot of GODZILLA and building toward GODZILLA VS. KONG in 2020, KONG: SKULL ISLAND, like GODZILLA, isn't even a remake, but is instead an original story that features the titular monster.  Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, whose only previous narrative feature was the moderately well-received 2013 Sundance entry THE KINGS OF SUMMER (following the trend of studios handing tentpole blockbusters off to newly-arrived indie filmmakers), KONG is an energetic brawler of a popcorn flick, drawing its superficial influences from a variety of 1970s Hollywood films and more recent South Korean and Japanese films.
Set in 1973 at the end of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the movie hits the ground running and our characters are at the eponymous island within at least 20 minutes (I wasn't actually timing).  Brought to the ominous and uncharted Skull Island under the pretense of a geological survey, the mission is spearheaded by Bill Randa (John Goodman) of the mysterious government agency "Monarch", with Lt. Col. Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), still sore about the conclusion of the Vietnam War, leading the team's substantial military escort.  There's also a skilled tracker and decommissioned British military officer, James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), and photojournalist/anti-war activist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), among others, as they arrive at the perilous island for what soon reveals itself to be a monster hunt.  The king of the island is Kong (performed in motion-capture by Terry Notary, who also plays "Rocket" in the Planet of the Apes reboot series), the eccentric Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly) tells them, a pilot stranded there since WWII, referring to the 100-foot carnivorous ape that destroys the expedition's helicopters shortly after they arrived.  Kong is hardly the monster they have to worry about, though.

Compared to Gareth Edwards's GODZILLA reboot, KONG: SKULL ISLAND is a sharp turn in another direction (one that may disappoint that film's fans), eschewing that restraint, grandeur and the subversion of expectations in exchange for an abundance of big action, light tone and a decent dose of insanity, without sacrificing the spectacle.  The movie tries its hand at humor frequently, keeping the monster mashing from any sort of undue self-seriousness, but unfortunately rarely hitting the laughs.  Reilly does alright, bringing a lot of dry wit, but it's usually more gently amusing than delivering on belly laughs.  It's more fun than GODZILLA, in a junk food sort of way, and the characters are easily more interesting.  The monster fights are awesome, with this Kong relating more to the not-quite-just-a-giant-gorilla of the original 1933 movie than the 2005 version, being bipedal, aggressive and with nothing against a bit of meat, in one scene, he fashions a club out of a huge tree like a street fighter for walloping a ravenous giant reptile.  It's also got a real mean streak, although sort of in a boyish way that takes glee in the memorable ways human beings can meet their gruesome fates at the jaws of Skull Island's various fantastical fauna, rather than the sickening overkill of something like JURASSIC WORLD.  To be honest, I was contemplating what exactly it is about a fairly cruel monster movie like KONG: SKULL ISLAND that is more tolerable than JURASSIC WORLD, and I'm not entirely sure, at least in respect to the way in which they both reduce minor characters to monster chow.  In any case, KONG is nasty from time to time, but not in a way that significantly cuts into the fun, and sometimes in ways that are gruesomely amusing. 

                                                                                                                                                                             Warner Brothers