Skip to footer

'Kong: Skull Island' is a fun movie with an inspired setting

( PG-13 ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

'Kong' stars Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Tom Hiddleston as members of an expedition who travel to a previously uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean and encounter King Kong.

|
Chuck Zlotnick/Warner Bros. Pictures/AP
Tian Jing appears in a scene from, 'Kong: Skull Island.'
  • By Peter Rainer Film critic

I don’t know that I could defend my enthusiasm for “Kong: Skull Island” in a court of law. My only defense is that I’m a sucker for movies about the big guy, even when they are overlong and lumbering, like Peter Jackson’s 2005 redo. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts and his screenwriters, Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, and Derek Connolly, had the inspired idea to set the film in 1973 just as the United States was hastily pulling out of Vietnam, thereby setting in motion a kind of loony mashup of “King Kong,” “Moby-Dick,” and “Apocalypse Now.”

The crew includes a dissolute black ops vet (Tom Hiddleston), an intrepid combat photographer (Brie Larson), a biologist (Corey Hawkins), and a deranged colonel (Samuel L. Jackson) who would give Ahab a run for his money. Their mission is to explore a previously uncharted fog-enshrouded island in the Pacific Ocean, a place where, as an old-time secret op (John Goodman) puts it, “God didn’t finish the creation.”

It’s not long before helicopters are crash-landing and soldiers are being dined out on by the island’s gargantuan inhabitants – giant spiders, toothy reptilian meanies, and octopuses. Kong rules the island and is a lot more philosophical than these other creatures, but he stands some 100 feet tall and roars a lot, so don’t get too close.

The island’s most enjoyable denizen is Hank Marlow (a very entertaining John C. Reilly) – note his surname, all you “Heart of Darkness” fans – who is a World War II pilot who was marooned on Skull Island and has made peace with the smattering of peaceable natives. He still thinks that war might be raging and is not in any way crazed, despite his discomfiting living accomodations for several decades. He’s an oasis of sanity in this insane terrain.

The action and special effects are mostly first-rate and Vogt-Roberts maintains a vaguely satiric tone that sidesteps schlockiness. I’m not sure having actors of the calibre of Hiddleston and Larson running around a monster-infested island is making the best use of their talents, especially since both seem poised to appear in a sequel. But at least they look as if they had fun. So will you.

The defense rests. Grade: B (Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for brief strong language.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Kong: Skull Island' is a fun movie with an inspired setting
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2017/0310/Kong-Skull-Island-is-a-fun-movie-with-an-inspired-setting
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe