Saturday, October 22, 2016

Shin Godzilla

Shin Godzilla (2016), is Toho's most recent entry in the Japanese Godzilla series, their first in 12 years.  It's a complete reboot of the timeline with Godzilla first appearing in present day Japan.  No time is wasted setting the story in motion, which is refreshing compared to the prevalent cinematic style of late to linger far too long on things.  A boat is adrift in Tokyo Bay.  The Coast Guard goes to check it out, finding no passengers, only signs of them.  Then the boat is attacked by some kind of giant unidentified creature, which turns out to be Godzilla.  Duh.

Various government officials assemble to strategize with the Prime Minister and get a lid on things in a series of scathingly satirical scenes where each meeting leads to another meeting in a different conference room and then a private meeting in yet another room followed by a press conference and so on.  It's a comedy of bureaucracy.  Meanwhile, Godzilla comes ashore doing what I can only describe as a chicken walk, smashing into anything that doesn't get out of his way, obliviously leaving destruction in his wake, while the powers that be still haven't come to a decision as to what to do about it.

From there a ragtag group of scientists, politicians and government officials are gathered to stop the beast, followed by some classic destruction and many more under-the-gun, backroom strategy meetings on how to handle this 'thing'.  A ticking clock is introduced when Japan submits to the UN's decision to evacuate the country and drop a nuke on Godzilla's ass, providing an interesting link to the original film given its inspiration was drawn from the atomic bombing of Japan during WWII.  Refusing to let their country be decimated for a second time, our team must race against time to try and defeat Godzilla using brains rather than brawn.

There are some great Japanese character actors in the piece that you may recognize like Jun Kunimara (Hard Boiled (1992), Audition (1999), Ichi the Killer (2001) and the Kill Bill films) and Shin'ya Tsukamoto, a great director in his own right, among others.  The few english-speaking actors in the film give painfully stilted performances, while somehow the Japanese actors that slip into english here and there manage to maintain the integrity of their performances.  The creature design is really cool, with Godzilla's unevolved form having giant gills in his neck, googly fish eyes, and a doofus expression slapped across his face (which I'm sure sounds dumb but is actually hilarious, in a good way) and his final form with craggy seaweed-black skin glowing red underneath, and badass lasers emitting from his mouth and dorsal fins, not that they're anything new, but they're still badass.  It's neat watching Godzilla evolve throughout the film.  At 2 hours it feels a little long, though for a film of this scale it's definitely shorter than it could be, still three-fourths of the way through as the scientists are deciphering Godzilla's molecular structure and gathering the necessary resources for their attack things could have been streamlined.  All in all, it's absolutely better than 2014's Godzilla, and worth a watch.

My rating:


4 Wrecked
Skyscrapers
Out Of 5







Check out the trailer:


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