The big guy brings it in “Kong: Skull Island.”
The little people? Not so much.
The beloved mighty ape known as King Kong gets a reboot here, and it’s probably not the last we’ll hear from the big fellow. Because unless it tanks, “Skull Island” sure looks like it’s setting the stage for an eventual showdown against Godzilla, who was similarly rebooted when he got to destroy San Francisco in 2014.
The new Kong story takes place in 1973 as the United States is leaving Vietnam. John Goodman plays Bill Randa, who leads a massive, federally funded expedition to explore a mysterious island in the Pacific. The film begins as Randa gathers his team from Southeast Asia. Tom Hiddleston is James Conrad, a former British special forces soldier turned mercenary. Brie Larson is Mason Weaver, a photographer looking for a Pulitzer. Both are great actors who don’t show it here, because they’re too busy wearing tight shirts and saying banal lines that leave little room for character development. True, it’s a monster movie, and the main attraction is bigger than a skyscraper. But these two are absolutely wasted as expensive eye candy.
That’s not the case for Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Col. Preston Packard so over the top, one expects him to wind up wrestling the ape. Packard and his helicopter unit, fresh off the horrors of Vietnam, are assigned to protect the expedition, and he’s still wound tighter than Larson’s blouse. He takes this Kong business very personally, which sets up a showdown that viewers can see from miles away.
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (“The Kings of Summer”) must have watched “Apocalypse Now” a dozen times to prep for this adventure. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — especially if you’re making a movie that builds toward a helicopter assault on a very large, angry ape who really doesn’t like helicopters. The visuals here are fantastic and make for a wild ride, especially in 3D in an IMAX theater.
But beyond the great visuals you have … not a lot. The humans do what humans usually do and begin tearing up the island, on the pretext of mapping it. This, of course, makes for an angry Kong, who actually has a backstory and something of a relationship with the island’s inhabitants. It’s his island, and you live there only because he allows you to.
John C. Reilly does his best Dennis Hopper as Hank Marlow, a half-crazed World War II pilot who’s been living with the locals since his plane crashed. He’s mostly here for comic relief and lunges at his role with nearly as much gusto as Jackson. In many ways, the movie is a like a giant, spectacular cartoon, and to try to get anything more out of it would be fruitless. The actors mostly seem to be playing for a paycheck. The dialogue is mostly awful, and the characters as written don’t give us much reason to care about them. Even the terribly good-looking Hiddleston and Larson can’t seem to whip up any chemistry between them.
The spectacular action and gorgeous scenery carry the movie, which is to be expected in a King Kong movie. The ape is the headliner, and he doesn’t disappoint. He’s overwhelming when he’s not happy, but he also has a soft side. (You’ll never guess which person he takes a shine to; it would’ve been more original if Kong were gay).
Part of his job seems to be to keep an underground population of vicious reptile beasts from destroying the tribe of humans on the island, played, of course, as stone-faced natives who ritualistically cake their bodies in Day-Glo mud.
The ending is, as you’d expect, big and loud and well-executed to set up the epic monster movie still to come. Let’s hope in that one they’ll take the time to create characters we can actually care about. It’s not fair to make Kong do all the heavy lifting.
