hings are looking bleak for filmmaker Carl Denham (Black). Studio executives hate the footage they've just seen from his latest film, and, thinking he's lost his touch, they're about to pull the plug. Denham makes a pre-emptive strike: He grabs his film crew and leading man Bruce (Kyle Chandler), rustles up a replacement leading lady, struggling vaudeville performer Ann Darrow (Watts), and rushes them all onto a floating bucket of bolts known as the good ship Venture. Denham also stalls his friend, playwright Jack Driscoll (Brody), just long enough that he's stuck on board as the ship pulls out of a New York City dock. The Venture's destination? Skull Island, an uncharted island in the middle of nowhere, the perfect site for Denham to shoot the necessary footage to put his new movie over the top and restore him to the good graces of the studio execs he left at the dock huffing and puffing in anger.
As the Venture motors toward Skull Island, relationships settle into place, ominous utterances are made, and warnings fall on deaf ears. Denham isn't easily daunted, but that's more to do with his shallow and obsessive nature than genuine pluck. Ann and Jack promptly fall in love. And the Venture crew, including the cook, Lumpy (Serkis); the captain, Englehorn (Kretschmann); and crewmen Hayes (Parke) and Jimmy (Bell), sense they're riding a slow boat to disaster. The Venture crashes into the rocks ringing Skull Island, and Denham runs off, determined to record its splendor. Only it's a creepy, people-less wasteland ... at least for a moment. Suddenly, Night of the Living Dead-esque Skull Islanders attack the group and grab Ann, intending to make her the next sacrifice for the island's lonely, awesome beast, a 25-foot-tall gorilla called Kong.
All hell breaks loose from there. A Venture rescue party races to save Ann, while Ann herself races to save herself. In time, Ann and Kong form a bond. She amuses him and eases his loneliness; he protects her from the dinosaurs that consider her their next meal. Finally, Denham devises a way to capture Kong and, upon doing so, brings the big guy back to New York City, where he's put on display as the eighth wonder of the world. Soon, however, Kong breaks free, goes on a rampage and, with Ann in hand, climbs to the top of the Empire State Building.
Too much of a great thing
It's long been Peter Jackson's dream to remake King Kong, and his passion for the material is abundantly clear. Jackson's film amplifies every scene and beat from the first film and fills in details he no doubt felt the original omitted, plus there are nods, winks and in-jokes (listen for names, look for cameos) that pay tribute to the Cooper-Schoedsack 1933 original. The first part of Kong goes easy on the effects as Jackson leisurely immerses the audience in 1933 and lets them invest in Ann, Jack and Carl as the Venture rumbles toward Skull Island.
Actually, an hour passes before shaking trees and rattling ground herald Kong's arrival. Then the action shifts into overdrive for another hour, as Jackson stages one bravura action scene after another. Kong battles dinosaurs; Denham and company take on spiders, flying creatures and funky phallic thingies, not to mention dinosaurs. The running and screaming stop only long enough for Ann to win over Kong, which she does by dancing and juggling, and for Denham to stop, set up camera and capture the proceedings. It's pretty much the same once the story returns to New York for hour number three: Action sequences pause just long enough for the characters to consider what's transpired. Ann feels guilty she's been used as bait to lure Kong, Denham sees dollar signs in exploiting Kong, and Jack nurses the emotional wounds of losing Ann ... to a gorilla.
There's so much right about King Kong, from its rousing action to its playful humor, from its touching pathos to its pure, only-on-a-big-screen grandeur, that its shortcomings—make that longcomings—are unfortunate. Watts imbues every role she plays with tremendous earthiness, and Jackson takes full advantage, frequently moving in for close-ups of her expressive face. Brody makes for an engaging and unlikely hero, while Black is properly blustery. That the character comes across as more cartoonish than real is no surprise, as Carl is conscience-free; in fact, it's Carl's assistant Preston (Hanks) who lends his boss any semblance of humanity. Jackson also gives his supporting characters a moment to shine. Chandler is a hoot as the hunky but wimpy screen hero who runs for cover at the first sign of trouble. Parke and Bell share a nice father-son chemistry, and Serkis, freed temporarily from his mo-cap dots, grunts manfully as Lumpy.
And then there's Kong. As realized by Jackson, Weta Digital and Serkis (pulling double duty as Lumpy and the reference actor for Weta), Kong is a living, breathing creature capable of expressing lifelike emotions ranging from boredom, anger and jealousy to amusement, affection and sadness. Check out Kong's face in two sequences: In one, he displays pure joy and affection as he glides with Ann across the ice in Central Park, then confusion and fury as military forces take aim at him; and in the other, when he peers into Ann's eye before falling from the Empire State Building, tangible, profound loss registers.
And now to the aforementioned shortcomings. King Kong is simply too long. The original film ran a taut 100 minutes. Jackson lets scenes play on ... and on and on. Even the film's most jaw-droppingly brilliant sequence, Kong vs. the dinosaurs, rambles on for 20-plus minutes. Just as troublesome? Some of the special effects. Ann flailing in Kong's hand as he runs, whether it's on Skull Island or in Manhattan, too often looks cheesy. Worse, Carl and company dodging a bunch of dinosaurs on Skull Island. Worse than that? Ann, in the foreground, running parallel to embarrassingly 2-D dinosaurs. So much of King Kong is superlative and groundbreaking that these glitches are glaring, distracting and frustrating, too, as they suck the viewer out of the moment.
