MOVIE REVIEW: The Kong abides — latest giant ape film rules jungle with fast-moving action, dazzling effects

Iwent to the new King Kong flick expecting a lot of things -- huge bugs, giant apes, helicopters being swatted out of the sky -- but one thing I was absolutely not anticipating was Apocalypse Now.

Primarily set in 1973, just after Nixon ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts lays it on pretty thick in the opening scenes, with burned out soldiers, swirling purple mists, and helicopters flying in tight formation against exploding, napalmlike geysers of flame.

He also cranks out a selection of golden '60s hits (thankfully not from the Doors, but CCR, The Hollies, Stooges, and, naturally, Jefferson Airplane are well represented), wrapping his story against a backdrop of civil unrest: The opening credits audaciously take us from the end of WWII to the advent of the war with the Viet Cong, utilizing news clips that suggest something far more somber and serious than a giant ape movie is about to take place.

As you might imagine, however, somewhere midway through the first act, Kong finally does appear, and from that point on, the film drops any pretensions to the contrary, and just hits us with a big spectacle monster movie.

It's an odd combination of elements to be sure, and the transition is far from seamless, but you can at least appreciate what the young director -- whose previous film, The Kings of Summer, was likely made for less than it cost this film to turn on the lights -- did with his Big Hollywood material. It helps that he had no less than the esteemed Dan Gilroy to help write the screenplay, or at least give it a polish from the other screenwriters -- among other projects, Gilroy, along with his brother Tony, were deeply involved with the Jason Bourne series -- which helps explain why the film jumps us around from Capitol Hill and Saigon to Bangkok, in the film's opening minutes.

We meet Bill Randa (John Goodman), as he and his young geologist partner, Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins), try to convince a congressman to approve a trip to a mysterious uncharted island recently revealed by satellite photo. Taking with him a military attachment led by the intense Col. Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), and accompanied by Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) a combat photographer, Randa also brings on James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), a diligent former member of British Special Forces now working as a tracker, but for what purpose exactly no one else on the team seems to know.

Making their way through the dangerous "continuous storm system" that surrounds the island, which keeps it nearly impenetrable, Packard and his team have all of about 30 seconds before first encountering the undisputed king of the place. This version of Kong stands about 150 feet tall or so, closer to the menacing ape we see in the original 1933 version's movie poster, dwarfing the New York skyline, than the much reduced Kong in the 1976 or 2005 versions, standing uncertainly on the Empire State Building.

After wrecking the choppers, and laying waste to many of the men, Kong heads back into the jungle, leaving Packard staring daggers -- Vogt-Roberts goes as far as to have them exchange scowls in extreme close-up, like something out of a Sergio Leone showdown -- and the team scattered throughout this most dangerous land. Fighting to make the rendezvous point on the other side of the island, the disparate groups go in different directions, with Conrad leading his team to safety, and Packard vowing revenge and heading deeper into the jungle.

Along the way, Conrad's squad meets up with Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly, who appears to be having a blast), a former WW II pilot marooned on the island ever since his plane crashed. Living with the indigenous people of the island, he has learned just how important Kong is, protecting the tribe from, among other things, the giant snakelike lizards that slither up from underground and snack on people like Tic Tacs. It is around this time that the more laboriousness elements of the plot eventually start to drag on the film's pace, but Vogt-Roberts knows enough to rush us to the next Kong scene, as he battles giant squids, flesh-ripping birds, and an enormous snake-lizard with disturbingly human-looking arms.

As far as that goes, we can take each version of the character from previous films, including the jerky stop-motion effects of the original, to the synthetic CGI from Peter Jackson's 2005 remake, and put them away in a time capsule. What this film does remarkably well is give us a full-bodied Kong that moves and acts in a way that seems utterly befitting a giant of this magnitude. In one scene, the film combines the two most historically bedeviling elements to CGI -- flowing hair and water -- and produces a battle between Kong and the aforementioned squidlike thing that's almost ridiculously realistic (and ending with Kong slurping up the disembodied tentacles like fettuccine noodles).

Naturally, as with all the previous versions of the character, he does have an eye for the ladies, taking particular interest in Larson's Weaver (perhaps he just likes recent Oscar winners), but rather than turning him into a lovesick puppy, Gilroy and crew offer a version that is more paternal than horny teenager: Kong is much more generous with his protection, proffering it to all humans, at least the ones who aren't trying to vaporize him with napalm.

As such, he quickly becomes the film's sympathetic figure, much like his dragonlike doppelganger, Godzilla, and the warmongering Packard nearly as much a villain as the king of the snake-lizards. The film's politics are pretty straightforward -- for the most part, everyone you think will likely die does (including the one scientist most against the idea of going there in the first place); while the worthy humans, who can see what a benefit Kong is to the ecosystem there, get a chance to get off the place.

Still, just as early sailors indiscriminately slaughtered the dodo to extinction in a matter of 150 years, Packard and his ilk see a land richly unknown that has been as yet untouched by man's clutches, and see only the challenge of bringing it under their iron-fisted domain. Perhaps if the dodos had a guardian as effective as Kong, they would have better survived the experience.

MovieStyle on 03/10/2017