This Kong film is big, but not necessarily dumb
Bill Randa (John Goodman) is a scientist who at the beginning of Kong: Skull Island secures funding for a mission to a mysterious island in the South China Sea, perpetually shrouded in thunderstorms, hitherto un-mapped and unexplored. His mission: to locate one of filmdom’s most iconic characters and make him relevant for audiences inured to the usual ho-hum of crashes, car chases and explosions of solarlevel size and ferocity.
And, against all odds, he succeeds: Kong: Skull Island is a big, noisy B-movie infused with moments of wit and sprightly visual sophistication, anchored by what surely must be the most enormous version of King Kong since the giant ape made his screen debut in 1933. (After being on all fours in Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong, now the big ape is back up on his feet again.)
Liberally borrowing imagery and story points from Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now, this tale of adventure – with a less-than-subtle subtext about the perils of heedless human interference in the natural world – doesn’t necessarily tread new ground. Nor does it revisit the original film’s famous climax atop the Empire State Building. But there’s a commendable level of artfulness to the overheated spectacle, rewarding viewers not just with the expected tableaux of the title character swatting away helicopters and bullets with irritated ferocity, but also with one or two genuinely memorable human characters and some welcome panache.
The best decision made by the team behind Kong: Skull Island was to set it immediately after US President Richard M Nixon’s “peace with honour” speech, when troops in Vietnam are readying to go home. Randa, having secured his funding back in Washington, is in need of a military escort to the island, meaning the presence of a ragtag group of seasoned fighters, led by the bellicose Lieutenant-Colonel Packard (Samuel L Jackson). Also along for the ride: a photographer named Weaver (Brie Larson), a team of Trekkie-looking scientists and a British tracker pointedly named Conrad.
When the monstrously huge title character makes his first appearance to the exploratory crew, it’s both gratifying and terrifying, and as the story deepens we discover that his rage has an altruistic purpose.
What’s more, he’s not the only scary creature on the island, where Our Heroes soon meet up with supersized versions of a spider, a water buffalo and, in the film’s gruesome and seemingly endless climactic scene, a screeching, slithery-tongued lizard.
But it’s the title character who gives the film it soul, morphing from a monster into a symbol of the colossal folly of military belligerence and hegemonic hubris. With its band of interlopers destroying the island to study it, the humans of Kong: Skull Island quickly begin to personify the real heart of darkness, becoming far more frightening than the fearsome figure at its centre.
As monkey movies go, this one’s big, all right. But not necessarily dumb. – Washington Post