Remarkably effective...

Rating: 9/10 (29 July 2019)

British Director Gareth Edwards (veteran of the SUPERB 2010 film "Monsters") steps in for this umpteenth Godzilla reboot, which offers an interesting mix of grand-scale (pretty realistic-looking and flag-waving) military involvement and at times rather surreal or impressionist-looking monster scenes. Given that Godzilla is (in line with tradition) a guy in a monster suit (that's TJ Storm), that seems wise.
Godzilla's enemy is the radiation-loving MUTO creature (in fact two of them, with babies set to hatch at any moment), and here we presumably resort to other techniques to screen these flying-swimming-walking and on-fire creatures never fully identifiable at any point in the two hours, but looking a tad like a more robotised version of the arachnids in "Starship Troopers".
Anyway, Godzilla is a hero figure (breathing blue fire), who - true to the original concept - (eventually) rids the world of those pesky bugs. Crediting him with "saving San Francsico" seems to be going a bit far, since he destroyed almost as much Frisco infrastructure as his enemies during the course of their fight!
While the detonation of a nuclear bomb just a few miles offshore is ridiculously under-emphasised in terms of its effects, the story is mostly followed logically otherwise (to the extent that the main concept can ever be logical), and deftness of directoral touch is to be witnessed at many moments in the film.
Perhaps unfairly - but also in the interests of authenticity - every reference is made here to real-life destructive events like Chernobyl, the tsunami in Japan, Fukushima, and 9/11; and this stokes up the impact considerably. This also means eccentric moments and weird juxtapositions of the intact and non-intact that such scenarios really do denote.
Perhaps rightly, actors are not too important to this story, though the most familiar faces are Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche (sacrificing husband and wife in the context of the movie's leeeeeeeengthy scene-setting phase), as well as Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins; and all do what they have to do well enough. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is rather there but not there...
But mostly this is a disaster+monster movie handled well, taking its time to a surprising (and mostly telling) degree, with a lot happening out in the dark and in the depths or in the distance, and assuming the necessary creepiness that that entails.
Scary it aint, but atmospheric certainly yes...