Overblown creature feature fails to thrill
(12A, 118 mins)
MANKIND tumbles several links down the food chain in this rollicking 1970s-set adventure which revives an iconic movie monster.
Unfolding on a Pacific island where “God did not finish creation”, the picture unleashes a menagerie of hulking beasts as well as the titular ape and contrives a series of CGI showdowns between these leviathans of a lost world.
Bill Randa (John Goodman), head of a secretive government organisation, leads a geological survey to a remote Pacific island and sequesters Preston Packard (Samuel L Jackson) to fly the mission.
Packard corrals his best pilots and loads aircraft with sonic bombs to map the island’s topography.
Passengers include tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), antiwar photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) and biologist San Lin (Tian Jing).
The sonic weapons rouse a giant ape and the best-laid plans of men of science are smashed to smithereens.
Kong: Skull Island angrily flexes its muscles, but punches below its weight.
In moments of calm, character development is given disappointingly short shrift and the cast are squandered in bland roles.
Hiddleston is unconvincing as a former British soldier hired to lead the otherworldly expedition, and his action sequence involving a samurai sword and gas mask is almost laughable in its execution.
A brief end-credits coda teases the headon collision of monster franchises in next year’s Godzilla: King Of The Monsters and the fullblown rumble Godzilla vs Kong in summer 2020.