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The ape headlines and all other parts of the movie get crushed in Kong: Skull Island |
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Cast: Tom Hiddleston (James Conrad), Samuel L. Jackson
(Colonel Preston Packard), John Goodman (Bill Randa), Brie Larson (Mason
Weaver), John C Reilly (Hank Marlow), Corey Hawkins (Houston Brooks), Toby
Kebbell (Major Jack Chapman), John Ortiz (Victor Nieves), Jing Tian (San Lin),
Jason Mitchell (Glenn Mills), Shea Whigham (Earl Cole), Thomas Mann (Reg
Slivko), Richard Jenkins (Senator Al Willis)

This pretty feeble film is a crumby repackage of numerous
(much better) films – and yet another example of a generation of film-makers
producing films whose only points of reference are older, better movies. This
one plays like Apocalypse Now humped
by King Kong. Perhaps one day we’ll
actually get some truly original, distinctive films that make their own points
rather than reworking others. And perhaps we’ll still get genre films that
actually are interested in character and development, rather than bashing and
blowing things up.
Anyway, the human characters are almost completely pointless
in this B-movie retread. I was wondering how they persuaded such an illustrious
cast of actors to come on board. This mystery was solved when I watched a
remarkably bland DVD-feature – Tom Hiddleston’s video diary. This was basically
shots of Hiddleston talking about having a great couple of weeks in Hawaii
flying in helicopters, four weeks sunning himself in Australia and three weeks
of travelling down a Vietnamese river. And he got paid millions of dollars to
do it. No wonder he ends the video saying he’d recommend this life to anyone.
It certainly wasn’t the character that lured him in. Conrad
is interesting for precisely one scene – as a troubled drunk in the bar –
before he reverts into clean shaven, upright and heroic. His vaunted skills as
a tracker are never used. His set-up as the natural survivor and leader never
comes to fruition. His relationship with Brie Larson is based solely on them
being the two most attractive members of the cast. As for Larson: has an
Oscar-winning actress ever followed up her win with such a truly pointless,
empty, non-part?
The film is completely uninterested in human beings – it
can’t even bother to make those that buy it early in the film distinctive
individuals. Even the ones left at the end barely pass as people we know. Only
John C Reilly crafts a truly engaging character as a sort of Ben Gunn figure.
Samuel L Jackson gets the “soldier maddened by war” so that we have the typical
“the real danger is man” sub-plot, but everything is by the numbers. The
characters are so mix-and-match that you feel no peril at any point. It’s so
cynical that it can even drop in a Chinese scientist from nowhere (who does
nothing at all in the film) solely to try and sell the film to that market.
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Our nominal heroes: most of them I've already forgotten |
Kong is the real focus of the movie – and there is limited
interest you can get out of a gigantic ape bashing and ripping things apart.
Protracted battles go on and on and on. You really see the difference between
the work of Andy Serkis and Peter Jackson in their Kong movie and this one.
That Kong actually felt like a character you could bond with. This is just the
wet-dream of a boy who grew up watching too many Harryhausen pictures, a
behemoth who everyone stares at with wonder but whom the audience never feels
any emotional investment in. And for all the faults of Jackson’s Kong, it was a film with brains, with
heart, made with artistry and which understood character and emotion give meaning
to spectacle, rather than being dull speed bumps a film needs to get over.
The film aims sometimes for an Apocalypse Now-style dread of humanity and the madness of war etc.
etc. – but nearly always misses. The humans (and their aims) are such non-event
blanks that we can’t care less about the danger of humanity. The film itself
has none of the poetry of Apocalypse Now,
and instead just wants a lot of (PG rated) violence and a bit of madness. Some
of the madness even seems a bit uncomfortable – a tribe of natives are treated
as humble exotics. It’s aiming to piggy-back on an attitude of America being
humbled by Vietnam and lashing out – but never adds any material in the story
to actually take this idea anywhere. Calling characters Conrad and Marlow
doesn’t suddenly give it a Heart of
Darkness depth – it just makes you think the screenwriters thumbed through
CliffNotes before naming their characters.
Instead the film winds on, never really getting
entertaining, boring us with the characters and taking way too long lingering
over monsters and bashings. The only thing the film loves is the bang, the buck
and the “ain’t it SO COOL” shots of a monster ape hitting things. It’s totally
empty, boring trash and it has all the grace and skill of a child’s home movie.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s professionally made – but totally empty. Nothing in
there is designed to stick with the audience or even remotely make them think.
Harryhausen movies had a depth and magic to them that inspired a generation.
Films, like this one, churned out by today’s imitators are empty light shows
that won’t last a week in the imagination.
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