Some baffling storytelling decisions in this one

Rating: Null/10 (28 June 2014)

A Godzilla movie that only shows Godzilla in brief establishing shots and then veers away when the action is really starting, only to cut back to the aftermath of the said action. It's like the film makers were trying to emulate the old Godzilla movies without realizing that the film makers back then would have liked to show more Godzilla, they just didn't have the budget for it. Hence the cuts.
So yeah, the film doesn't exactly deliver like it's supposed to with this kind of budget and expertise. I wouldn't even mind, but we just saw Pacific Rim last summer, a far superior monster film by far. This film spends way too much time following around these soldiers opposing Godzilla and the other monsters, than it does showing us these monsters. I literally had to pick up my jaw a couple of times. So baffling were these focus choices.
And yet, it does work, kind of. Because the film starts out phenomenally well. The suspense builds up slowly, the mood and the atmosphere are both bleak, intense and dark, the setting is introduced with care and we actually get some really good characters and character moments. Bryan Cranston's Joe Brody is a great character and I'd have loved for this movie to be solely about him, and perhaps Ken Watanabe. But then we start to focus more on Brody's son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Godzilla shows up, turns out to be a big disappointment and it all spirals downhill from there.
It's not a bad film. A disappointing one, yes, but it has enough bang for your buck. The first act is great and whenever the actual monsters are on screen, the film immediately picks up in quality. If only they had had the sense to not shy away from the monster, this could have been an excellent movie. Now it's merely average.