A mostly enjoyable spectacle, but with some flaws

Rating: 6/10 (27 March 2017)

A diverse team (including scientists, army personnel, researchers, and an ex special forces operative) join forces to explore an uncharted island in the South Pacific. Researchers believe that mythical beasts may inhabit the island, but these beasts turn out to be truly terrifying; none more so then the god of the skull island himself King Kong.
With Kong: Skull Island you're essentially getting a reworking of the King Kong story rather than a direct remake and once I realised that this wasn't a remake I was looking forward to what the writers would serve up here. For the most part it is a good film which remains fairly enjoyable, but there are problems along the way...
Kong: Skull Island is set in 1973 and the team's visit to Skull Island coincides with the end of the war in Vietnam. In some ways this isn't a bad way to set the story up, but to me it felt like the writers had a bit of an agenda and got a little heavy-handed with their war politics early on - we're told on a number of occasions that America withdrew their troops from Vietnam and Samuel L Jackson gives a speech to this effect. This sort of thing is OK in a war film or possibly even in a war-related drama, but in a monster blockbuster film it doesn't sit right and felt really out of place.
The film is called Kong: Skull Island so I think it's reasonable for the film to have Kong and or Skull Island as its focus, but the truth is that it doesn't. The film doesn't show enough of Kong and nor does it show enough of the mythical Skull Island. Aside from the team arriving on the island and the epic final showdown, Kong himself is given very little to do and it's this very reason that the film occasionally lacks intensity and edge-of-your-seat thrills. I think part of the reason that the film doesn't always work so well when Kong isn't around is down to the characters themselves; the truth is that nearly every single character here is either dull or a total cliché. I hoped that the writers would use their differing backgrounds to create some quirky dynamics, but this never happens and for that reason I never felt that there was much of a sense of teamwork. Hiddleston is the lead actor here, but he's rather stiff and wooden and has all the charisma of a cabbage. The rest of the supporting cast are OK, but again nearly all of them are uninteresting people with no real depth. Some of the army characters are fun, but a lot of them are fairly clichéd war characters with all of the inherent cheesy war dialogue.
The picture does become more fun when we're introduced to John C Reilly's character; although believing that his character has managed to survive on the island for 28 years really stretches one's suspension of disbelief and depicting him as some kind of tribal god was dumb beyond words. Having said that though he was at least fun and was a breath of fresh air in comparison to some of the other characters.
Still despite some of the problems, it remains a mostly enjoyable film that to its credit is watchable and is never boring and the final showdown is excellent and does make it all worthwhile (watching it on the big screen does help to be honest). Worth a watch for its action sequences and its epic showdown, but the picture does suffer slightly when Kong isn't around.