DIRECTOR: Jordan
Vogt-Roberts STARRING:
Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Jing Tian, Toby Kebbell,
John Ortiz, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann, Terry
Notary, John C. Reilly PRODUCER: Thomas Tull, John Jashni, Mary
Parent, Alex Garcia SCREENWRITER: Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein,
Derek Connolly
BASED ON: King
Kong by Merian C. Cooper MUSIC: Henry Jackman CINEMATOGRAPHER: Larry Fong EDITOR: Richard Pearson GENRE:
Sci-Fi PRODUCTION COMPANY: Legendary
Pictures, Tencent Pictures DISTRIBUTOR: Warner
Bros. Pictures COUNTRY: United States
LANGUAGE: English RUNNING TIME: 118
minutes
Technical assessment:
4
Moral assessment:
3
CINEMAQ rating:
V14
In 1973, the US sends
a team to an uncharted island in the South Pacific—that is perpetually
enveloped in clouds and is recently discovered by satellite—to see if the
island is inhabited. British agent James
Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), a former Special Air Services captain, is hired to be
chief hunter-tracker, while Lt. Col. Preston Packard (Samuel Jackson), heads
the military’s helicopter squadron, the Sky Devils, to chopper the team to
Skull Island. The only woman in this
team of soldiers and scientists is an anti-war Life photographer, Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), who suspects the
mission is a military operation hiding a dark agenda. Scattered and scampering for safety after
their choppers are crushed like toy drones by a 100-foot tall bipedal ape, some
team members encounter stranded American pilot Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly),
and get to come up close and personal with Kong.
Kong: Skull Island opens with two WWII fighter pilots engaged in hand
combat; as one is about to kill the other, a giant ape appears, interrupting
the fight and making the combatants flee for dear life. This prologue is essential to the plot’s
unfolding. If you expect the story to be
about an oversized simian getting infatuated with a beautiful human female, you’ll
be disappointed. Kong here is a celibate
loner, the last of his kind, is revered by the island’s human population as god
and king, and picks only on enemies his size.
The film’s CGI, especially the ones with Kong fighting the alpha Skullcrawler
and the monstrous octopus, combined with a humane story and a dash of humor should
make entranced audiences feel how 118 minutes fly so swiftly.
Kong: Skull Island is really about the beauty of the beast. It may be fiction, meant to entertain us, but
the movie teases the imagination and offers many points worthy of
discussion. For one, there is something
poignant about a formidable ape—who’s two and a half times as tall as Luneta’s
Rizal Monument—protecting the environment and a lost human tribe from giant
predators. Are simians supposed to be
that intelligent and compassionate that they could put to shame military
characters who out of smugness would mindlessly destroy the life and beauty in
an unknown territory? Another is destructive human aggressiveness: consider the
bombing of Skull Island and ask why humans make such powerful, destructive weaponry—is
it just out of self-preservation and national defense, or out of a lust to conquer
territories ahead of a rival world power?
Which is more frightening, man-made violence or the wrath of nature
provoked? CINEMA cautions elders (who
may be intending to watch a DVD copy of the movie at home) to keep children out
of the viwing area. Grisly deaths and multiple
dangers facing characters in the movie might prove too scary, even traumatic,
for them.
