Superb

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2017)

In 1944, during World War II, two fighter pilots—an American named Hank Marlow and a Japanese named Gunpei Ikari—parachute onto an island in the South Pacific after a dogfight. They both engage in close combat, with Ikari gaining the upper hand. A large behemoth creature suddenly interrupts the fight, causing both soldiers to stare in shock and flee.
29 years later, in 1973, former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad, a skilled tracker is hired by U.S. government agent Bill Randa to guide an expedition to map out an island known as "Skull Island". Randa also recruits the Sky Devils, a Vietnam War veteran helicopter squadron led by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard and prominently made up of his right-hand, Major Jack Chapman and Captain Earl Cole to escort them to the island. The group is soon joined by pacifist photojournalist Mason Weaver, who plans to expose it, believing it's a secret military operation with dark purposes.
Arriving on Skull Island, Packard's men begin dropping explosives developed by seismologist Houston Brooks to determine if the ground is hollow, despite Conrad's objections. The helicopters are suddenly attacked by a 100 foot-tall bipedal ape known as Kong, and many are destroyed, with the survivors split into two groups. The survivors' only hope for rescue is a resupply team that will meet them at the island's northern end in three days time. Randa reveals his affiliation to the secret government organization Monarch to Packard and the expedition's real purpose: to acquire proof of the existence of forgotten monsters, fearing that they may soon return to take back the world from humanity. Randa also explains that he himself once served on a U.S. Navy ship that was destroyed by one of those monsters.
Packard and his remaining men bury their dead comrades and begin searching for the missing members of the expedition, including Chapman. On the way they encounter a giant spider-like creature, known as "Mother Long-legs", that kills one man and nearly eats another before they manage to slay it. Meanwhile, Conrad, Weaver, Brooks, biologist San Lin, soldier Reg Slivko and Landsat employee Victor Nieves, among others, encounter the local Iwi natives and meet Hank Marlow, the American pilot who crashed on the island all those years ago. Marlow reveals that Kong is the island's guardian and is worshipped as a god by the natives for protecting them from Skullcrawlers, reptilian underground monsters who have slaughtered Kong's ancestors, leaving him as the last of his kind. He also mentions that a Skullcrawler killed the Japanese pilot he landed on the island with and became friends with. Marlow reveals Kong only attacked the helicopters to prevent the bombs from awakening the "Big One", thus protecting the locals from it. Miles away from them, Chapman witnesses Kong wrestle and defeat a large octopus, causing him to flee into the woods, where he encounters a giant stick insect. Soon afterwards, he is eaten by a Skullcrawler.
Weaver encounters a giant sker buffalo, trapped under a fallen helicopter. She tries to rescue it until Kong comes and saves the creature, before leaving Weaver, who is awed by his compassion.