Review: ‘Kong: Skull Island’ revives ‘King Kong’ with ’70s-era style and welcome wit
Starring Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell; directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts; 118 minutes; PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for brief strong language
“Mark my words. There will never be a more screwed-up time in Washington.”
Thus speaks Bill Randa (John Goodman), a scientist who at the beginning of “Kong: Skull Island” arrives at the Capitol in 1973 to secure funding for a mission to a mysterious island in the South China Sea, perpetually shrouded in thunderstorms, hitherto unmapped and unexplored. His mission: to locate one of filmdom’s most iconic characters and make him relevant for audiences inured to the usual ho-hum of crashes, car chases and explosions of solar-level size and ferocity.
And, against all odds, he succeeds: “Kong: Skull Island” is a big, noisy B-movie infused with moments of wit and sprightly visual sophistication, anchored by what surely must be the most enormous version of King Kong since the giant ape made his screen debut in 1933.
Liberally borrowing imagery and story points from Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now,” this tale of adventure – with a less-than-subtle subtext about the perils of heedless human interference in the natural world – doesn’t necessarily tread new ground. Nor does it revisit the original film’s famous climax atop the Empire State Building. But there’s a commendable level of artfulness to the overheated spectacle.
The best decision made by the team behind “Kong: Skull Island” was to set it immediately after President Richard M. Nixon’s “peace with honor” speech, when troops in Vietnam are readying to go home. Randa, having secured his funding back in Washington, is in need of a military escort to the island, meaning the presence of a ragtag group of seasoned fighters, led by the bellicose Lt. Col. Packard (Samuel L. Jackson). Also along for the ride: a photographer named Weaver (Brie Larson), a team of Trekkie-looking scientists with a NASA outfit called Landsat and a British tracker pointedly named Conrad.
That plummy gentleman is played by Tom Hiddleston, who’s always improbably and unnervingly well-groomed. But he’s an outlier within an otherwise scruffy team of misfits who make sure to pack a reel-to-reel tape player on one of the several helicopters they take to the cloud-encased redoubt.
The Vietnam War setting gives “Kong: Skull Island” lots of opportunities to evoke the period in pyrotechnic explosions and yellow-tinged clouds of toxic gas. It also, not incidentally, allows for choice cuts from the likes of Jefferson Airplane and Creedence Clearwater Revival; the promiscuous use of machine guns, hand grenades, flamethrowers and napalm; and snippets of macho vocab like “two clicks to our north.”
Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts does a good job of doling out the requisite number of wowsers and whammies, and engaging in gratuitous mayhem and destruction, but along the way creating a rich sense of atmosphere and detail.
His majesty the king, in “Kong: Skull Island.” MUST CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures
His majesty the king, in “Kong: Skull Island.” MUST CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures