Newest Kong story smells like napalm

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This article was published 10/03/2017 (3143 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One character is named Conrad. Another is named Marlow.

That’s a sign the screenwriters of this monster movie have either read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or at the very least they’ve seen Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam-based adaptation of Conrad’s 1899 novella.

Lest you think Kong: Skull Island will have the gravitas of either work, be assured, the movie blows any aspirations to high art faster than you can say “Skullcrawler.”

The film’s studio, Warner Brothers, may have initially approached the project with the intention of layering some classic literature into a movie about a giant ape.

Perhaps they were scared off by the negative reaction to all the high-flown Sturm und Drang of their DC Comics movies and decided: let’s keep this simple.

And, yes, notwithstanding casting Kong as the mysterious jungle-dwelling figure Kurtz in Heart/Apocalypse, the movie that remains is a fast-paced festival of the freakish.

It’s set in the year 1973, at the close of the Vietnam War. Monster hunter Bill Randa (John Goodman) negotiates funding for an expedition to the titular uncharted island, perpetually cloaked from the eyes of interlopers by a hurricane-like weather system.

To do the job, he gets a contingent of battle-hardened marines, led by Col. Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), a soldier embittered by his country’s effective defeat in ’Nam.

Also along for the ride, former SAS agent James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), assigned as a survival specialist and all-purpose tracker, and self-described “antiwar photographer” Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), hired to help document the discovery.

Past Kong movies have tended to delay glimpses of the giant ape. In this version, Kong makes an appearance in the 1943-set prelude, in which an American pilot and a Japanese pilot crash-land on the island. And then he quickly appears again, swatting at the invasion of military helicopters like a cranky pensioner swatting mosquitoes.

There are two sets of survivors to the resulting mayhem. Conrad and Weaver find the island’s primitive human population, which include that aforementioned American pilot Marlow (John C. Reilly), a half-crazed hermit figure who dreams of having a beer and watching a Cubs game with a fervour that borders on the erotic. He also warns the group of “skullcrawlers,” ravenous subterranean monsters that could take over the island if not for Kong.

The other set, mostly marines, fall in with Packard’s plan to avenge their fallen brethren by killing Kong, no matter what the consequences. And since Kong effectively protects the human population, the stage is set for a clash of titans and non-titans alike.

It’s fun at times, especially the times Reilly is onscreen. But it also feels strangely haphazard. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts seems to be trying to avoid Peter Jackson’s reverent-to-the-point-of-canonical approach to the big guy in his 2005 remake of King Kong.

Vogt-Roberts goes loosey-goosey in his approach, with the result that, despite the solid CG visual effects, the monsters are no more awe-inspiring than if we were watching guys in monster suits stomping their way through a carboard Tokyo.

Yes, it’s unpretentious, but we’re left with the niggling feeling this could have been so much more interesting.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing