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King Kong (2005) Movie Review - Buy Movies - Rent MoviesPeter Jackson is now one of the true masters behind the rolling cameras and boy does he deserve every accolade going. Over the last few years he has dominated the cinema winter box office with the Lord of the Rings trilogy and now he is aiming to do the same with his re-telling of the legend that is King Kong, the eighth wonder of the world!
Ann Darrow as a struggling performer finds herself out of work. Unable to find employment and struggling to survive she finds herself in dire straits but a proposition from an ambitious but slightly dodgy filmmaker Carl Denham opens up a window of opportunity for an experience and journey of a lifetime. Some of the unwitting participants on this adventure are scriptwriter Jack Driscoll and dashing actor Bruce Baxter. On their way to where they think is Singapore; Denham deceives his cast by plotting a course towards Skull Island… the home of Kong! There they come across Uruk-Hai type natives who would have them for breakfast (lunch and dinner), strange looking insects and other sorts of weird and wonderful creatures not forgetting everyone’s favourite…dinosaurs, all in a world that could have been written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
From here, everyone knows what happens next. Girl meets giant ape. Giant ape falls in love. Giant ape gets captured. Giant ape runs amok in big city. Only girl can save us. Giant ape falls of very tall building and dies because of love for girl. Sounds simple enough but how has Jackson tackled this beast? Has he stayed faithful to the romance, beauty and simplicity of the original?
Firstly, Peter Jackson is a great director. He has a talent for taking on projects that ‘cannot be done’ as he did with LOTR. King Kong is fantastically directed. The performances are wonderful. The talented Naomi Watts is perfect, beautiful and breathtaking as Ann Darrow. Adrien Brody is first-class as Driscoll, Jack Black is an inspired choice to play the unconventional filmmaker Denham and the brilliant Andy Serkis as Kong also deserves a mention (as well as an Oscar). He is so much more than a man in a monkey suit!!!!! Supported by the likes of Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) and Kyle Chandler, the casting cannot be faulted.
Secondly, by re-imagining parts of the tale, Jackson succeeds in adding extra weight and dimensions to the characters and the story, which is commendable in today’s market where a lot of movies seem to concentrate solely on the CGI or Bay-esque explosions as its main selling point.
Alas it is the amount of time it takes to set the scene, develop the characters that causes the film to have a weakness. The opening 40 minutes of this picture is reminiscent of watching Arsenal under George Graham; effective, deliberate but a little unexciting. Also, the interaction between Kong and Darrow a number of which is sheer genius, seems to slow the movie down to a snails pace and adding some unnecessary minutes to the running time. In a nutshell there is only so much a story can be stretched about a giant ape and the beauty that captivated him.
Thankfully however the positives outweighed the negatives. The performances were top class, the direction was superb and the CGI was out of this world. Kong himself looks fantastic and extremely real and it seems the CGI/SFX was pushed to the limit with one of the highlights being the ferocious but incredible battle where Kong takes on the T-rex’s. In a word…astounding! One cannot help wondering what Jurassic Park would be like if Jackson hade made it now? Spielberg, you better watch your back!!!!
There maybe some feeling that Jackson was in a Catch 22 situation when he took this project on. The 1933 original demonstrated perfect storytelling, filmmaking and clever effects for its time catapulting it to an all time classic status. The movie got straight to the point and there was no messing around but with Peter Jackson’s talent, a straight scene for scene re-make was never on the cards but instead he decided to give all the characters including Kong dimension and depth. So with that in mind this re-telling surpasses the original in every way managing to preserve the beauty and romance with a touch of brutality to introduce King Kong to a new generation of moviegoers. However as mentioned earlier parts of the film seemed to be a tad too slow and the story a wee bit stretched robbing us of the simplicity that made Cooper and Schoedsack’s masterpiece so damn compelling. As a consequence Peter Jackson’s King Kong qualifies only as a good movie instead of an exceptional one, which is a shame because a lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into this picture. Leon Nicholson
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