Godzilla (2014) – Review

Review: Godzilla is visually striking and features a few very compelling moments, but overall is quite disappointing, pulled down by a fairly terrible script. The film is about engineer Joe Brody and his family. Joe works at a nuclear power plant in Japan that melts down due to a presumed natural disaster, killing Joe’s wife. Fifteen years later, Joe is still searching for answers, believing that the plant meltdown is being covered up and that something else entirely is responsible. Meanwhile, Joe’s son Ford has moved on from the tragedy and has his own family in San Francisco. Ford must come to Japan, however, after his father is arrested trespassing on the site of the old plant. Joe convinces Ford to come with him one last time to search the site for answers. Once there, they discover something profoundly terrifying. This is a film about a giant monster after all.

Godzilla is very polarizing for me (the film, not the character). On one hand, I found it to be mesmerizing aesthetically, often thrilling me with its fantastic visual spectacles and the best score of 2014 so far. But on the other hand, the characters and script are just plain awful. Sadly, despite very impressive visuals, this is just not a good film.

Director Gareth Edwards seems poised to deliver a classic monster movie, delaying Godzilla for most of the film’s first two acts, seemingly instead to focus on building strong characters.  The problem is that his characters are paper thin and their emotional exchanges are laughably clichéd and contrived. The scenes involving the human characters are mostly unwatchable, especially when they attempt to convey some sort of emotional exchange. Edwards never takes the time to give his characters any real character attributes or character-centric moments to involve the audience on a deeper emotional level; they are all hollow shells that just blankly say poorly written lines of dialog. The audience could care less about any of these human characters. They are essentially pointless; and yet, they take up most of the screen time. Thus, Edwards structuring the film to delay Godzilla’s appearance for a large chunk ends up hurting the film overall as the first half plays very slowly (due to the lousy characters).

It is as if Edwards devoted all his time and effort into making sure the visuals and the action involving Godzilla worked, forgetting that for the film to exist outside of being just pure spectacle he also needs strong characters at its core that the audience can care about and invest in, which in turn allows the drama and action the play bigger. Clearly, the human characters were an afterthought, only included at the last minute with little effort taken because someone told him he could not have a film without human characters (pure speculation).

But even with all that said, Edwards gets the visuals completely right. Once Godzilla gets involved and the action ramps up, the film actually becomes fairly interesting, as the viewer is thrilled by the pure ambiance created by the smoky, overcast, dark, foreboding cinematography and the brilliant thunderous and sort of spooky score. The atmosphere created is wonderful. And then Edwards introduces the monster and is able to pull off the epic imagery with panache.

After being bewildered by just how bad the characters are in the film, I found myself entranced by the film, enchanted by the striking images and atmosphere Edwards employs in the second half. The characters themselves are still pointless, utterly, but the visuals take over carrying the film.

At the end, one might even call the film satisfying – but that is completely dependent on one’s expectations for what the film should be or aspire to be. For those looking for something that is pure spectacle featuring a massive monster engaging in grand terror and destruction then this film will probably work quite well, as essentially that is all it does well. For those, however, looking for a complete narrative film with strong characters, Godzilla will be a letdown. Again, even with its tremendous visuals, it is just not a good movie. But, and this is its saving grace, it does entertain once it gets going.

On a side note, Edwards seems to be highly influenced by Steven Spielberg. There are a number of moments that feel like they are carbon copies of similar moments across Spielberg’s films. Particularly, Edwards utilizes “The Spielberg Face”, especially when it comes to using children to employ the dramatic device; though, I will say that Edwards uses it much less effectively. Even worse, Godzilla ultimately feels like a remake of Jurassic Park, mirroring many scenes and thematic and stylistic elements (but with far weaker characters). Everything somewhat shamefully copies everything else in filmmaking generally, but I kept thinking that the two paralleled each other very closely throughout, as if I were watching a updated version with slightly better visual effects.

Technical, aesthetic & acting achievements: Gareth Edwards has made two feature films, both of which focus on large monsters making landfall engaging in carnage and creating dread among human inhabiting the areas. His first film Monsters somewhat feels like it could be a sequel to this Godzilla film, as Godzilla introduces monsters to the human world, while Monsters is about humans living in a world also inhabited by monsters. They are similar in many ways, but what sets them apart is that Monsters feature reasonably good characters while Godzilla has terribly underwritten characters, and thus its seems as if Edwards has taken a step backwards as a filmmaker. But that said, I look forward to seeing what he does with Godzilla 2, as again his visuals were rather good.

The wonderful aesthetics are thanks to the collaborations with the great group Edwards worked with on the film. Composer Alexandre Desplat delivers a phenomenal score given the genre and style of the film (here is the full score; it is honestly far better than the film it is in). It has a great chilling power to it, often sounding as if it were written for a horror thriller or ghost story. It is spooky and very fun; and, I like the Japanese influences and accents as well. I will be surprised if it is not among my three favorite scores of the year when all is said and done (Desplat already gave us the fantastic The Grand Budapest Hotel score earlier this year as well, which I also loved). Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography perfectly sets the mood working in dark and gloomy tones. There is a scene in which paratroopers deploy through the clouds which is just visually astonishing and kind of beautiful. Owen Paterson’s production design does a good job grounding the film in reality, even though it often feels ridiculous (the sheer spectacle of watching Godzilla traipse through a city is kind of just as hilarious as it is mesmerizing). Designing sets that feel and look obliterated must have been fun. Overall, the film being as good as it is in moments (not overall) is thanks in large part to the work of these three.

It is hard to say that any of the actors are good in Godzilla as it is not really true, but it is not their fault. The script is one of the poorest of this year so far. They do their best. David Strathairn plays a typical military man type, while Juliette Binoche plays Joe’s wife who has the tough task of making the audience feel something (unsuccessfully) by dying in the first five to ten minutes of the film. Ken Watanabe plays a scientist who just wants to see Godzilla flourish, while Sally Hawkins plays another scientist who follows his lead completely (neither serves any purpose except maybe for some exposition). Bryan Cranston plays Joe, a crazy person who is vindicated while also wearing a horrifically terrible wig. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Ford, a military man who is fed up with his father being a crazy person. Ford finds Joe being obsessed by the tragedy that claimed the life of his wife (because that seems unreasonable), believing that it is being covered up, annoyingly tiresome, as he has moved on. Elizabeth Olsen plays Ford’s wife Elle, and like Ford she too has no personality or character whatsoever. These actors have all been very good in other things, but here with Godzilla they are basically being paid to kill screen time until Godzilla shows up (as presumably the budget could not pay for two hours of Godzilla smashing stuff) with little care given to actually creating fully realized characters of any kind.

Summary & score: Godzilla is everything one could hope for in terms of being a grand monster movie. There is just one hitch; it is not a very good film in every other regard. 6/10

The Green Hornet (2011) – Review

The Green Hornet is an entertaining buddy action comedy that takes full advantage of its cast, script and subject matter. Michel Gondry (known for his unique style) directs maybe his most straight-forward film to date, however his style is not completely gone as he does place his camera interestingly creating some nice shot composition (not always common for big action or comedy movies). However, this feels much more like a film by writing team Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg than it does a Michel Gondry film. That is not a bad thing, as it is very funny and the dialog and overall silliness of the situations and characters allow to film to stand out and in many ways stand above most other recent buddy action comedies. However, liking this film is probably contingent (to some degree) on liking their other two produced screenplays: Superbad and Pineapple Express, as the comedy in this film is in much the same vein as those films. The relationship between Britt Reid (The Green Hornet) and Kato – their dialog, interactions, friendship and so on – is the best part and generates most of the entertainment in the film. Sure there are good action set pieces, funny scenes with the villain and other characters, but Reid and Kato’s relationship develops in such a manner that the audience enjoys watching (and to some extend being a part of it), thus caring about the characters and outcome – making the film successful overall. The villain Chudnofsky also brings humor to the film with the continuous joke that he is not very menacing or cool. It is fairly refreshing and works quite well (I thought, at least). The issue with the film though is that outside the relationship of Reid and Kato and the exploits of Chudnofsky there is not much else there. All the other characters fill specific story roles, but do not feel real or even necessary. Plus, the major factors in Reid wanting to be The Green Hornet stems from both a need to help people and his relationship with his father, neither is given enough emotional weight to make Reid’s actions feel real or have the audience care (however, I think while important and ultimately what stops this from being a better film, this is not as important by a long shot to the relationship between Reid and Kato, which the film does very well). Despite some narrative flaws in building full characters, The Green Hornet is a blast, filled with fun action and lots of laughs.

Technical and acting achievements: Michel Gondry tackles his most ambitious film here, having not really shot big action set pieces before and not to mention that this seems out of his comfort zone. The result does not really resemble a typical Gondry film, but his aesthetics and keen sense of composition still creep their way in; they are just not blatant (like his other films). James Newton Howard provides a good score for the film that while not overly memorable fits the visuals and tone well. Cinematographer John Schwartzman’s work also fits the tone of the film well – letting the actors play out their comedic roles while also presenting the action in an exciting manner. A lot of credit also goes to editor Michael Tronick who did great work on the film. Owen Paterson’s production design grounds the film in the real world, but also includes grand sets (like the newspaper building) and cool ‘home bases’ for the characters (I like Chudnofsky’s construction trailer office, for example). Tom Wilkinson, David Harbour, Edward James Olmos and especially Edward Furlong (who is hilarious in his small role) provide good supporting work. Cameron Diaz is really given little to do in the film and it is hard to believe that they cast her or anyone as famous as her for the part, and thus ends up merely being just a pretty face, and she has some funny moments too. James Franco has a fantastic cameo in the film. His scene with Christoph Waltz is maybe the best in the film (it is awesome). Waltz is wonderful as a crime lord with seemingly low self-esteem. He pretty much steals every scene he is in (but what else did you expect). Leads Rogen and Jay Chou make a great team and their performances are very funny and charismatic, carrying the film.

The Green Hornet is very funny, has good action and will entertain. 7/10