Very well done despite plot holes

Rating: 8/10 (16 May 2014)

A very well done Godzilla movie, despite several plot holes that did not irritate me enough to still sit back and enjoy the show. The plot holes were big enough to make me not give it a 10 out of 10.
A few of issues that irked me: (1) the shortest way from Point A to Point B maybe a straight line, but it will not be the easiest way, if you are going through a fight-to-the-death between Godzilla and a couple of MUTO's (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms) and (2) why is it in movies about San Francisco that when people evacuate they just HAVE TO GO TO SAUSALITO?
I've only been to the Bay Area a couple of times and the Golden Gate area once, but once was enough for someone to point out that the Golden Gate Bridge connects SF with Sausalito. Ever since that experience, I cannot look at evacuations scenes on the GGB the same way.
(3) I think the police and city planners would have evacuation routes planned out and people would have been evacuated sooner. We have experience with this sort of thing with regards to hurricanes. (4) Nuclear fall out is still a thing to be worried about for populated areas 20 miles away from several megatons going boom and if you are less than 20 miles out, it is more of a concern.
For those complaining that there are not enough fight scenes between Godzilla and MUTO's, I think that is both the appeal and agony of Godzilla movies. You really want to see the monsters fight, but the film never seems to give you enough. It is how Godzilla movies have been done for 60 years and this movie delivers like its Toho studio predecessors in this regard. It is one of the defining attributes of the Godzilla genre.
Overall the movie strikes a good balance between devastation (we're paying to see the monsters flatten stuff), the fear and helplessness of being stuck in a fight between forces greater than you and not driving it home to the point you curl up in the fetal position at the loss of life.
I think this is one reason the human characters are not as three-dimensional as they could be. You just cannot have deep characters people connect with on an emotional level and wipe out a major U.S. city and still have people leaving the theater without crying.
So far this is the best big-budget Godzilla movie to date.