...or so it seems. One of the most memorable scenes from the movie I just returned from watching, and there are many, has a big-boned gentleman, all dressed in black, looking desperately for his blonde, and tossing every other away like a kid in a heap of barbie dolls. And then, just as he is about to hurt an important cast member, his lover walks into the scene like an angel, through a fog that hides all the havoc wreaked in her absence. And that is what this classic is all about - the search of the hero for his heroine whom he is madly in love with.
The name's Kong...King Kong - the beast to Naomi Watts' (Ann Darrow) beauty. There's also Jack Black and Adrian Brody and a decent supporting cast. But the Oscar for the Best Actor in a Lead Role goes to the ape from Skull Island. Just as the one for Best Actor in a Supporting Role last year should have gone to the deranged hobbit looking for his preciousss.
I was slightly late for the movie and I missed the opening sequence that I have heard is brilliant. The art direction and the cinematography for the scenes set in Depression-era New York are top-class and it sets the dark mood for the movie brilliantly. There's a quaint mix of humor with underlying pain and premonition of impending horrors that seeps through the first hour or so. The first 60-70 minutes see a wastefully artistic film maker Carl Denham (Black) being threatened by studio executives, a starving Ann Darrow being signed on by the sly film maker for an adventure movie to be shot ostensibly in Singapore, a passionate and talented writer Jack Driscoll (Brody) being conned into accompanying the crew for the shoot, and the crew finally setting off on a mysterious voyage. Very late into the journey do the ship's crew and the film unit realize that they are bound for an as-yet-undiscovered island called the S-K-U-L-L Island (see the movie to understand why I wrote the name like that), which has an unenviable reputation.
If I was impressed by the technical details in NY, I was speechless with the camera-work on the ship. And that is still not the best of it. I am supposing that it's the same award-winning team that assisted Peter Jackson for the LOTR trilogy. The scene where the Skull Island is introduced after the nerve-wrecking buildup is to die for. And some junior members of the cast would do exactly that in a while.
The movie takes on a whole new momentum once the crew land on the island, or rather when they first encounter the natives. Yes, natives. I didn't know that there were natives too. I had only been expecting huge animals. The huge animals come a bit later. And boy, are they huge! Stegosaurus stampedes, multiple T-Rex combats, giant millipedes, giant flies, giant arachnids, giant (and gross) leeches, giant bats - little is left to imagination. Just one thing came to mind while I saw leeches gobble up Andy Serkis, or Kong tearing away the jaws of a T-Rex in great style - this movie is NOT for children. Jackson uses gore in good quantity, probably as a tribute to his pre-LOTR days.
After a lot of action on the island, Kong is finally captured in a heart-rending scene, and taken back to NY for the 'Greatest Show On Earth'. Things obviously don't go as Mr Black would have wanted them to, and we see some more CGI. I tolerated the gore, but the scenes where Kong fights fighter-planes while standing at the top of Empire State Building are too terrifying if you are acrophobic. And finally, after he has spent enough time on camera to make every actor jealous of the screen time he gets, Kong falls down to his death.
I don't understand why some reviewers have written that Jack Black doesn't fit the role. If you keep away images from his past crazy roles, you can appreciate the work he has done. He essays the role of the passionate film-maker, who models himself on the lines of Cecil B deMille, and is too cunning for his own good, wonderfully well. Adrian Brody is in form again and the role is tailor made for a man of his appearance. Naomi Watts takes Ann Darrow to a level I am not sure Fay Wray could, or at least was given a chance to. She screams like hell, but does a lot else too, including a really funny vaudeville act when she first spends quality time with her hairy lover. Her face lights up whenever she is having a fun time with Kong and it must be difficult to be so expressive when there is nothing in front of you while shooting, and she does it really well. The camera is wonderfully complimentary to her and she looks ravishing in some of the scenes. But as I said, the pick of the lot is Kong and, as a corollary I suppose, Serkis. He looks too real, and his expressions are better than some of the actors I have seen lately.
The reason why King Kong scores comprehensively over movies like Jurassic Park, or the really bad Godzilla, is that CGI, which is awesome for the record, is not the mainstay of the movie. It is used to enhance what is essentially a beautiful human story. King Kong is not about the huge monsters; it is the age-old story about the power of love, even if it is doomed, and the way it can change a monster into a gushing, and blushing, lover.
Jackson could have rested on his laurels after three brilliant movies in the LOTR trilogy, but he churns out yet another masterpiece, only to up the ante for himself and the Spielbergs and Lucases around him.
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