Monkey Business == Monster Mash

“Kong:  Skull Island” (2017) — movie review
Today’s review is for the monster adventure “Kong:  Skull Island” (2017), directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, with Tom Hiddleston as James Conrad, a former SAS tracker hired to guide a classified survey;  Samuel L. Jackson is Colonel Preston Packard, a battle-hardened commander nursing an unfinished war;  Brie Larson is Mason Weaver, a photojournalist intent on witnessing rather than conquering;  John Goodman is Bill Randa, the mission’s true-believer architect;  and John C. Reilly is Hank Marlow, a stranded WWII pilot whose island lore and survivor’s humor become hard-won wisdom.  Supporting cast includes Jing Tian as San Lin, Toby Kebbell as Maj. Jack Chapman, Corey Hawkins as Houston Brooks, Jason Mitchell as Glenn Mills, Shea Whigham as Earl Cole, Thomas Mann as Reg Slivko, John Ortiz as Victor Nieves, Eugene Cordero as Reles, Marc Evan Jackson as Steve Woodward, Miyavi as Gunpei Ikari, Richard Jenkins as Senator Al Willis, Allyn Rachel as Secretary O’Brien, and Terry Notary providing Kong’s performance core.  Together they populate a Vietnam-era creature saga where a storm-walled island and one colossal guardian turn a routine incursion into a moral reckoning.
Background:  I grew up watching the old King Kong and Godzilla movies on TV and at the theater, so these movies are a trip down memory lane with updated special effects.  Basically, you’ll have to pardon my inherent favorable bias in these reviews.  LoL.  Released in 2017, “Kong:  Skull Island” repositions King Kong within the modern MonsterVerse and shifts the story to 1973, fusing war-movie iconography with mythic creature cinema.  It did not win Academy Awards, but it has historic significance for re-framing Kong as protector rather than spectacle and for establishing the shared universe trajectory that leads to crossovers like Godzilla vs. Kong (2021).  Its era palette—’70s rock, napalm sunsets, rotary-wing bravado — functions as texture and commentary.
Plot:  A government-backed team fronts a geological survey to breach the island’s permanent storm wall, escorted by Packard’s helicopter squadron and guided by Conrad, with Weaver documenting the mission.  Kong’s defense shatters the formation and scatters survivors into a lethal ecosystem of Skullcrawlers, giant insects, and bone fields.  Marlow’s hard-earned lore reframes Kong as apex guardian rather than enemy.  Packard’s vendetta escalates toward a showdown that pits human obsession against ecological order.  The choice becomes stark:  withdraw and respect the balance, or re-fight a war the world has already abandoned.
So, is this movie any good?  How’s the acting?  The filming / FX?  Any problems?  And, did I enjoy the film?  Short answers:  Yes;  strong ensemble;  gorgeous, muscular visuals;  thin characterization and some pacing bumps;  yes — fun and resonant.
Any good?  Yes.  A vivid, propulsive monster adventure that pairs pulp pleasures with war-haunted subtext, landing its myth-versus-militarism argument even when the script leans on archetypes.
Acting:  Jackson’s volcanic focus turns obsession into the film’s human engine.  Larson supplies quiet moral gravity, insisting the creature be seen rather than hunted.  Hiddleston plays a capable stoic — less layered, but an effective “action” anchor.  Goodman adds conspiratorial heft;  Reilly steals scenes with warmth and melancholy.  The soldiers (Mitchell, Whigham, Hawkins, Kebbell, Mann) sketch distinct notes, though several arcs feel abbreviated.  Tian and Ortiz give the science-and-Landsat contingent credible texture;  Jenkins’s senator frames the bureaucracy with crisp economy.
Filming / FX:  Larry Fong’s cinematography paints jungle war poetry — sun-baked horizons, silhouette heroics, and napalm color that echo ’70s cinema without pastiche.  Kong’s design is monumental yet emotionally legible:  muscle, scar, and gaze rendered with clarity.  Skullcrawlers move like sleek nightmares — nasty, kinetic, and readable in action.  Henry Jackman’s score mixes brass-forward heroism with percussive dread, while era needle-drops root the film culturally.  CG integrates convincingly with on-location texture;  set pieces (helicopters vs. Kong, bone fields, cliff hunts) are staged with legible geography and scale.
Problems:  Character depth is uneven — several soldiers function more as tone (“red shirts”) than fully realized people.  Connective tissue between set pieces sometimes rushes, and thematic gestures (colonial critique, scientific ethics) are hinted rather than explicit.  Dialogue dips into mission-speak shorthand.  As with almost all of these “monster” films, it’s difficult to make the monster’s big enough to do things, but small enough to make them seem human.  Example:  one minute Kong is so large he can hold a helicopter in his hand and the next Larson / Weaver practically is the width of his palm.  And then, of course, there’s the fact that heavy machine guns and explosives would almost certainly have immediately killed Kong and all of the other monsters.  But hey, that’s Hollywood…
Did I enjoy the film?  Yes.  It’s a muscular, handsomely shot creature saga with a point:  myth vs / rebutting militarized certainty.  The Vietnam war echoes give the spectacle ballast, and Kong-as-guardian lingers longer in memory than a mere attraction.
Final recommendation:  Strong Recommendation.   No Academy Awards here (LoL), but a historically notable film for recasting Kong as protector within the MonsterVerse and for the coherence of its Vietnam-era aesthetic.  Watch it for the fusion of war cinema and monster myth, for Jackson’s blade-edged obsession, for Larson’s humane lens, and for a blockbuster that understands scale and size – “monster” and jungle threats.
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Click here (3 January) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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