A
quintessential popcorn flick, Kong: Skull Island doesn't try
to go deep with important themes or get entrenched in lots of set-up
or explanation, built on the premise that audiences want lots of
action and humor for two hours without any pretense that it's striving
to be anything else. You won't remember much of substance within
a day or two after seeing it, but that only means you can watch it all
over again at your leisure, fit for those times when you want to just
have something fun to watch without the need to pay strict attention
to nuance.
After an introductory sequence set during World War II to introduce
the massive ape, Kong, and the island he resides on, we spring ahead
to 1973, where we find the United States' government, in the waning
days of their involvement in Vietnam, planning an exploration of the
previously uncharted island in the South Pacific perpetually under
storm clouds, hoping to lay claim there before the Russians get there
first. Kong is there and greets the military choppers in the
manner you'd expect, i.e. he destroys them outright. Those that
survive the onslaught find that the island is full of other creatures
even more menacing than Kong, especially the "skullcrawlers" (as
long-surviving WWII pilot Hank Marlow (Reilly,
The Lobster) calls them), who
lurk like carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs around the island
consuming every creature in sight.
Directed with maximum fast-paced action-movie style from Jordan
Vogt-Roberts, who liberally steals from well-known jungle and
island-conflict classics like Apocalypse Now and
Jurassic Park, and perhaps a bit
of the TV show "LOST", it's built to be a fun thrill ride from
beginning to end. It's not the kind of movie that spends time to
build up more than the bare minimum necessary to explain the aim of
the mission and to give one defining trait to each of its many
characters before sending them off to either prevail or, more likely,
to die trying in sundry gruesome ways. For those who like to
predict who will die among the cast and in what order, you probably
won't be caught terribly surprised.
The actors are physically appealing in their roles, though none, save
perhaps John C. Reilly as the kooky WWII pilot gone loopy from too
many years with no one to talk to save the mysterious native people
who regard Kong as a god, especially shine in their performances due
to the sparse amount of time afforded to each of them. Because
the plot necessitates a brisk pace, there's not much time for the awe
that surely would have overtaken the humans encountering such deadly
mammoth creatures for the first time, but, again, the characters are
here merely to forward plot or to provide fodder for beastly carnage.
Visual effects are the real star here, and while they are gorgeous in
their level of detail and fluid movement, they also are so knowingly
artificial that we can never get the sense of weight or dimension to
any of the destruction that goes on screen.
Legendary Entertainment, who also produced 2014's reboot of
Godzilla, learned from the
criticism of that movie, which left some fans feeling cold due to the
abated action and lack of screen time for its main monster. The
more expressive Kong shows up here early and in full glory when he
does, while the slug-fest battle sequences are prolonged and
plentiful. Classic rock tunes fill the auditory canals, upping
the fast-paced tempo and music-video style montages to good effect,
much in the way that Suicide Squad
would for the superhero realm.
There are a number of story threads, none particularly that
interesting, serving only to move the action forward and set up
conflicts. The most prominent comes in the form of Samuel L.
Jackson's (I Am Not Your Negro)
character, Lt. Preston Packard, who makes it his mission to destroy
the giant ape for taking out a bunch of his squadron of soldiers, not
realizing that Kong's presence on the island is what gives it the
tenuous balance necessary from utter chaos. (Trivia: in keeping with
the Jurassic Park allusions, Jackson gets to repeat a line he
used in that film, "Hold on to your butts!") As such, Kong
doesn't represent how humankind comes to exploit and kill a beast who
meant no harm, but rather, a force of nature for man to contend with
in a battle to assert dominion over the planet. Essentially, he
needs to be killed because of his capacity to destroy.
For a pure piece of entertainment, you could do much worse than
Kong: Skull Island, as it is a slickly directed example of
populist nonsense, enjoyably escapist in a modest fashion that should
reasonably please anyone who comes in with low expectations.
Much like Jurassic World, it
crosses the bar by a hair's breadth, but what it trades in terms of
plausibility or rationale, it makes up for with spectacle and
well-rendered and digitally choreographed rumbles in the jungle.
It's a huge crock in the end, but you can't say that it doesn't
deliver on goods, adeptly processed and packaged for easy, greasy
consumption.
-- There's a stinger at the end of the credits setting Kong up into an
expanded movie monster universe.
Qwipster's rating:
©2017 Vince Leo
