Godzilla (2014)
Certified: PG
Duration: 123 minutes
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Bryan Cranston
KRS release
Godzilla opens with two scientists – Dr Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Dr Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) – entering a quarry, from where the source of all the trouble will begin.
Back in Tokyo, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) lives with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) and both work at a nuclear facility. The radiation that emanates from the facility is an attraction to something that escaped from the quarry and this ends up in disaster and death.
The monster here is more realistic than the humans who are lost in its shadows
Fifteen years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) – Joe and Sandra’s son – is now an ordnance disposal officer in the US Navy. Soon he is called to Japan when his father enters a restricted area and a chain of events is unleashed that makes it difficult for Ford to get home back to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen). The result is that it may well be that Godzilla, a gigantic monster, may be nature’s answer to man’s doom or safety.
I had greatly admired Gareth Edwards’s 2010 movie Monsters which was an excellent exercise of how best to get the most out of half a million-dollar budget. This film built on suspense, showed little and never outplayed its hand.
With Godzilla, the director goes to the other extreme, with a $160-million budget to boot. To his credit he shows confidence and, unlike the 1998 Roland Emmerich film, this movie does not distance itself from the kaiju (monster) movies that were spawned by the first Godzilla and were followed by a whole genre.
He takes on the genre, twists and updates as necessary and directs in a very Steven Spielberg style, building on suspense and anticipation until finally letting loose and setting the cinema screen on fire with a veritable phantasmagoria of action, special effects and all-out mayhem.
I am a Godzilla and kaiju fan and when I saw Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim two years ago, I felt that this film was the perfect amalgamation of kaiju and mecha that Hollywood had yet come up with. This Godzilla is a further step in the right direction as Edwards has made a film that is self-contained and yet cries out for a sequel, one that has soul and yet is special-effects driven.
The focus of the film is its creature, a monster that is a veritable force of nature at its brutish best. No human cast member can compare to it and, when it lets out that famous roar, we know that Edwards has pinned down the film perfectly. The cast either looks heroic, afraid, thoughtful or simply awestruck. It is very hard not to take sides and I ended up siding with Godzilla.
The end result, however, is a movie that goes beyond expectations. It is not simply a disaster movie but a rather thoughtful one that happens to star a rampaging monster.
The way Edwards slowly uncovers the film’s monster harkens back to the 1954 original. The computer-generated creature here resembles the original one from the time of the ‘man-in-a-suit’ monster and looks to be the creature that it is supposed to be and not some giant lizard as in Emmerich’s movie.
This whole scheme and slow build-up shows that Edwards has what it takes to deliver a suspense-filled movie that is not just another ‘disaster’ movie.
While the ‘humans’ are handled in a linear and clean-cut manner, the film has several shades and dimensions to it. It’s a nod to the previous movies and yet moves forward.
The monster here is more realistic than the humans who are lost in its shadows.