MONSTER HASH
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The giant monster belches back to life in the film, which harks back to the more child-oriented versions of the Japanese kaiju (“monster”) movies of the 1950s.
In an increasingly radioactive world menaced by
Page et’s see whether anyone remembers the lyrics of the Blue Oyster Cult song:
With a purposeful grimace and a terrible scowl, he pulls the spitting high-tension wires down.
Then, later: Oh, no! There goes Tokyo! In the newest Godzilla movie, opening today at theaters nationwide, the setting shifts.
Oh, no! There goes (San) Francisco!
radiation-eating beasts, the return of the almostcuddly “King of the Monsters” might be the least of our troubles.
Gareth Edwards, the visual-effects master turned director, impressed Hollywood with Monsters, his 2010 lowbudget horror flick. This time around — given a huge budget and hours to tell the tale — he delivers a lumbering movie that is as bloated as the rolypoly version of the Big Guy, whom we see in all his glory only late in the film.
The opening credits cleverly revisit the 1940s and ’50s atomic testing that awakened Godzilla the first time. Edwards’ film then jumps to the late ’90s, where mysterious goings-on in mining operations in the Philippines and near nuclear plants in Japan hint that something bad is afoot.
Bryan Cranston is an American engineer working with his wife (Juliette Binoche) when a tragic accident means that their boy, Ford, will grow up without a mom.
Years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson of KickAss) is a Navy bombdisposal Godzilla. Edwards.
Directed by Gareth
PG-13 (for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence)
2:03
at the Arena Grand, Crosswoods, Dublin Village 18, Easton 30, Gateway, Georgesville Square 16, Grove City 14, Lennox 24, Movies 16 Gahanna, Movies 10 at Westpointe, Movie Tavern Mill Run, Pickerington, Polaris 18, River Valley, Star and Strand theaters; and the Skyview and South drive-ins expert, and Dad is still hanging around the ruins of that Japanese reactor, a wild-eyed loon determined to get to the bottom of a cover-up.
Something is awakening.
Call it a MUTO (a massive unidentified terrestrial organism), and call in the military.
Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) has been following developments all these years. He knows what’s up. Cranston blubbers with emotion: “Something killed my wife, and I have a right to know!”
Taylor-Johnson doesn’t break a sweat as beasts try to keep him from making it home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) in San Francisco.
Watanabe runs through a panoply of stricken looks as he sees the menace, understands it and fails to convince the admiral in charge (David Strathairn) that the natural world needs order and perhaps the giant lizard will restore it.
Sally Hawkins was wastefully cast to simply stand behind Watanabe as Dr. Serizawa makes another “What fresh hell is this?” face.
The effects are decent: Warships are tossed like bathtub toys; trains are trashed; nuclear missiles are munched.
The movie is never less than competent, but the fatigue of overfamiliarity curses the franchise.
We’ve seen Japanese men in monster suits. We’ve seen digital kaiju and gigantic robotarmored soldiers fighting them ( Pacific Rim).
So in a tale this timeworn, in a film this void of humor and with only a few moments of humanity and tension frittered away by the tedious repetition of the fights, anybody who has seen any Godzilla film can be excused for posing the obvious question: What else do you have?