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Film review: Skull Island

MANILA, Philippines - Legendary Entertainment’s second Monsterverse outing after 2014’s Godzilla is Kong: Skull Island, and it heralds an early popcorn summer in March. A monster epic that aims to magnify and enlarge this more-than-familiar ape, the film is set on an isolated island that brings back memories of our first encounter with the Jurassic Park franchise. Proudly wearing its “monsters and action” heart on its sleeve, the film smartly doesn’t even attempt to add gravitas or strong emotional quotient to the storyline, and just goes for heart-pounding and open-mouthed wonders, punctuated by gruff asides and ironic humor.

Directed by Jordan Vogts-Roberts who gave us the indie charmer The Kings of Summer (a modern-day Stand By Me), Skull Island carries some of the touches of humor so wonderfully displayed in Kings, but is more of playing with lots of budget, having plenty of big toys and going for bigger moments. This works whenever a monster is onscreen — for besides the titular Kong, we also have giant spiders, stick insects, water buffalo and squid. Rating special mention are the subterranean dwellers “skullcrawlers” — giant, prehistoric lizards with extreme violence on their mind.

What works here is how this version of Kong has more depth of thought and instinct compared to past iterations. In Skull Island, Kong is actually a protector of the island, motivated to preserve the harmony and fragile peace that exists between the fauna and indigenous human inhabitants. It is when the monarch-led expedition arrives and sets off seismic charges that Kong rears his angered head to defend the island.

Much has been written about the ensemble cast providing the outside human element. But to be brutally honest, the likes of Brie Larson, John Goodman and Tom Hiddleston are merely going through their paces and cashing in on presumably big paychecks. It’s left to the similarly initialed John Reilly and Samuel Jackson to provide the acting fireworks: Reilly by infusing levity in the proceedings, and Jackson giving us the revenge motive via tight-lipped and bug-eyed mugging for the camera. The two are the only ones who seem to be having fun in this film, which truly stands on its monsters. Fortunately for us, the monsters do make their case for gifting us with cinematic moments — Kong appears within the first five minutes of the film, and I loved the sequence when while watched by a lone soldier, he washes up and tends to his wounds in a lake.

The pacing and cinematography are fast and crisp, respectively, so the close to two hours do whiz by. So the film gets the Kaiju (literally strange beast in Japanese) right, and it augurs well for the next chapter when Kong battles Godzilla. Unfortunately, it does so at the expense of the human cast, for other than Reilly and Jackson, they’re mere cardboard cutouts. If in previous versions of Kong, a bond was created between beast and woman, a very shallow attempt is made here. What really works best is beast against the world.