[yasr_overall_rating]
A team of scientists, soldiers, and adventurers unite to explore an uncharted island in the Pacific. Cut off from everything they know, the team ventures into the domain of the mighty Kong. As their mission becomes one of survival, they must fight to escape a primal Eden.
It has been 84 years since audiences first caught a glimpse of the giant, majestic ape known as King Kong, and in the ensuing decades he has returned to big screen time and time again, never failing to win audiences over after falling in love with a pretty blonde and being attacked by aircraft while atop the Empire State Building. “Kong: Skull Island,” directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, is a different kind of Kong movie, though, where beauty doesn’t kill the beast, and Kong serves as a metaphor for one of the most traumatizing events in United States history. This film may not be going for that same level of pathos, but rollicking monster fights and an A-list cast makes for a thoroughly entertaining, Vietnam-themed Kong adventure.
It’s 1973; the United States has just lost the Vietnam war (or as a character in the film puts it, “abandoned the war”). Government agent Bill Randa (John Goodman) and seismologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) have discovered a secret island in the middle of the pacific ocean, of which its inhabitants are unimaginable to most. To get there, they get the clearance to recruit a team under the guise of a mapping expedition, which includes expert tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) and the “Sky Devils,” a helicopter squadron led by Lt. Col. Preston Packard (Samuel Jackson). They arrive at the island only to immediately discover a giant gorilla-like monster, a confrontation which leaves many of them dead, and the survivors end up stranded on different parts of the island. One of the groups comes across the natives, and living among them is Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly), an American veteran who crash-landed during WWII and has been stranded ever since. He explains that Kong is their protector and that the island contains creatures much more sinister and dangerous that they must worry about.
The characters are fairly thin, with very few lines dedicated to providing backstory for them, but the film makes up for the script’s shortcomings by boasting a cast of talented actors. And even so, the actors don’t always seem like they are in acting in the same movie. Having the most fun is John C. Reilly as Marlow, who actually gets a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, but seems as if he is in a wacky “marooned on an island” type movie. Samuel L. Jackson’s Packard, on the other hand, is on a revenge mission, haunted by the failure of Vietnam, and fueled by the rage and sadness he is feeling in the immediate aftermath of seeing many of his men killed in the Kong encounter. Larson and Hiddleston are good at being attractive and likable; they develop somewhat of a rapport in an adventure full of cool monster brawls and arguments between the ideologically divided characters. Several other good actors make appearances as well, most of whom audiences will recognize and enjoy watching.
But the real star here, of course, is Kong, whose defining quality is that he is the biggest animal any human has ever seen, which in previous films is what gets him captured and taken to New York and exploited by men trying to make a quick buck. But by making him more massive than ever before, as well as bipedal, Vogt-Roberts achieves something else. He doesn’t want people to just be impressed by a big, anatomically correct gorilla, he wants people to look at Kong and realize that they are confronting a god, and to think about what that means. It’s spectacular to see this god-like creature protect his land and fight the evil monsters that lurk beneath, all done with state of the art special effects, and set to a soundtrack of all the songs you’d expect to hear in a Vietnam war picture.
It should be noted that the film is a PG-13 blockbuster that in many ways is emulating the cinematic universe formula that Disney and Marvel have done so well with (there is even a post-credits scene). While it doesn’t live up to the best of those films in its lackluster character development, it is probably more visually dazzling than any of them. It contains some flashy tracking POV shots, and more than a few really striking images, including one of the most memorable uses of a silhouette in any film that I can remember.
“Kong: Skull Island” is a fun monster movie. It has a few ambitions beyond that, but ultimately it mostly exists to provide one cinema’s most beloved characters with a big, beautiful playground to play in, and hopefully generate enough interest for audiences to come back soon and watch him go up against that other legendary giant monster that everyone loves. You probably won’t remember any of the human characters’ names a week after watching it, but if an “Apocalypse Now”-inspired King Kong movie sounds like fun, then be sure to check it out on the biggest screen possible.
In theaters Friday, March 10th
