Godzilla (2014) - ambitious and admirable

Rating: 8/10 (28 May 2014)

The first thing I thought whilst watching Godzilla and immediately after leaving was just how ambitious an attempt this was from director Gareth Edwards. He transferred from his very good low-budget film 'Monsters' to the other end of the spectrum, confirming, at the very least, he is a director with great potential.
What he produces is a fantastic monster movie and what I admired most about the film is that you can see just how ambitious he was when creating it. What he tries to achieve in only 2 hours of film is a credit to himself and the genre of film he is taking on. I am by no means a manic Godzilla fan. I watched the 1998 film when I was around 10 years old and, like any youngster, I had an obsession with Dinosaurs and the like so enjoyed the film immensely. But I am not one of those who has watched every trailer and had it book-marked as a 'must-see' film upon release. What I hoped to see, was a genuine attempt to make a serious, dark monster movie (again, I'm not a massive fan of the monster movie genre) and Edwards absolutely delivered that to my surprise.
To sum up his ambition, he tries his absolute best to dedicate as much time as is possible to the main lead (Ford Brody) as much as he does the monsters in this film. It may not pay-off entirely and maybe, in hindsight, he would've done things differently, but all the right intentions were there and it's certainly no failed attempt. We are introduced to his father, charismatically portrayed by Bryan Cranston, who dedicated as much passion as you'd see in any drama, and the fractured relationship between the two. We see Ford Brody's family, albeit briefly, and we are introduced to Elle, another solid performance from Elizabeth Olsen. All three give it their absolute best, although the selection of Aaron Taylor-Johnson may have been one of the areas to address if you had a second chance. He by no means is bad, but a different actor may have felt more believable. Ken Wantanabe and Sally Hawkins are mainly there to give us some insight into the films name-sake, and produce good performances, and the rest of the cast do solid jobs.
Edwards also looks to build as much suspense as he can before revealing Godzilla, something which I really liked. You get the pointers. You get references and the odd image, but he doesn't rush it upon us. My view is that once you've had the Godzilla reveal, and you've seen him on screen for 5 minutes, the novelty wears off. So I really liked the fact he tried to build suspense, whilst giving you one of the secondary monsters in this film to keep you engaged. Again, like the selection of some of the cast, he may have done things slightly differently if given the chance to re-make his re-make, but it's a brilliantly ambitious effort to dedicate as much time as he does to the human characters and to try and build suspense instead of just engaging us with 2 hours of mayhem. That comes very much in the second half of the film.
Once we get to the hour point, the main course is served. Godzilla is revealed and it turns into an action film for the majority of the remainder. As for Godzilla himself, and the two MUTOs, they are excellently done. I had feared from watching one trailer that Godzilla himself looked a bit 'B-movie'-ish, but he certainly doesn't. The special effects are very good and the set and characters almost become part of a stage for these three beasts who go to war and inflict as much damage as possible, which is why I felt the first hour worked so well. I'm a big fan of action films when done well. I start to lose interest when the action begins after the first minute and continues, non-stop, for the next 90, unless it's done to a really high standard. The destruction scenes in Godzilla are excellent and they are just the right length. I think 90 minutes to 2 hours of that and I would be writing a very different review.
And finally, just a word on the atmosphere and the way it's filmed, which I thought was the best and most unique part of Godzilla. There is one scene involving a halo jump that I thought was as good as any scene in any action film. The background music, the way it was shot (through the goggles of the main character), the darkness and the flickering lighting, sporadically revealing parts of the monster below as the men fell to what looked like hell. It was an incredible scene and the highlight of the movie. There are other scenes which leave their mark, where we get slight reveals of Godzilla but very rarely, in the entire film, do we see him in his entirety, another part which I found worked well.
All in all, Edwards and his cast can be incredibly proud of what they attempted and, ultimately, achieved. They decided to go for a serious tone, for a solid cast of actors either on the up or well established, and produce an atmospheric monster movie with an underlying human tale. Did it have faults? Of course. But I think the scale of this movie, the expectation upon the crew and the fact this is a film very early on in a promising directors career path means that the negatives should be ignored and replaced with the strengths of what this movie is. It's as good as you could hope of a summer monster blockbuster, and can take it's place not just in the monster genre, but in the action/drama category too.