Tuesday, December 20, 2005
King Kong

The Protagonist in his self-titled film "King Kong"

"Magic for the price of a ticket"

So says a character in the film "King Kong" and to that end, Peter Jackson gives us a 3-hour-long swashbuckling action adventure that just about delivers as much as what that character promised. Indeed, "Kong" can just about be summarised as a 3-hour rollercoaster ride that delivers its fair share of thrills and spills but with a emotional core at its centre.

Unlike many other action films, "Kong" doesn't deliver its thrills straight to us on a platter. It takes a long time to build. The story begins in depression-era 1930s New York where a struggling vaudeville artiste, Ann Darrow (a quite fetching Naomi Watts), soon finds herself unemployed when her theatre closes down. Faced with the unappetising prospect of starring in a strip joint and hunger, she is reduced to stealing which is how she meets Carl Denham (Jack Black), an ambitious filmmaker in no small spot of trouble himself. He is facing the prospect of losing ownership of his half-completed film as his financiers sought to repossess his film reels to sell as footage to recoup some small consolation for their heavy investment. Carl recruits Ann for his leading lady role (after his former leading actress walks out on the film) and then sets about deceiving Ann and struggling playwright, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) into boarding a rickety ship allegedly bound for Singapore for filming (STB gets extra mileage here. Wanna do a King Kong-theme tour for Singapore? You know, the "Where Carl Denham of King Kong might have shot his movie in Singapore" tour. Includes, erm, Sentosa, Boat Quay and Mohd Sultan Road) but which is really travelling towards Skull Island for footage. In the course of this journey, Ann and Jack will also find themsleves falling in love.

Wow, and that was just the opening act I was talking about. The second act of this film then takes place on Skull Island which is where Jackson keeps the action coming thick and fast relentlessly.

The film and boat crew, led by Captain Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann) a hunter who hunts for exotic animals to sell, soon find themselves crashing into the mysterious, fog-enveloped Skull Island during a storm and before long, the crew encounters the natives (Jackson makes an interesting choice here. He reduces the natives to Orc-like savages. It almost feels like a LOTR tribute) who attack the film crew and then have the boat crew besiege them in return.

However, before long, Ann would be captured and offered as a sacrifice to the mysterious Kong who only now appears on screen after an hour or so of setup. And then all hell breaks loose.

Jack and Carl soon find themselves leading a rescue mission to save Ann who is captured by Kong. And this long mission here is punctuated with loads and loads of hideous monsters hidden in the island that the rescue crew encounters. Besides enountering a herd of rampaging Brontosauruses, the crew is assaulted by Kong, the big primate himself, assorted man-sized creepy crawlies that devour people for food and later, huge vampire bats. To describe all these in words can't quite do justice to what happens on screen but trust me, the action doesn't let up and it's a thrill-a-minute ride that Jackson cleverly serves up.

This second act is intercut with sequences involving Ann and Kong which really gives the movie its heart and sweetness. For instance, when Ann is first captured and tried to escape, she is then faced by the 20-foot Kong which tries to establish itself as lord of the house with with furious teeth-baring and chest pounding. Her reaction, to dive straight into her stage routines to amuse Kong, provokes a reaction from Kong that really indicates the true nature between captor and captive. This is later further established by a furious battle between Kong and 3 (yes, THREE) T-Rexes as Kong tries to protect Ann, leading to a scene where Ann begins to understand Kong and this creates a beautiful scene at the end of it all where the two sit together to appreciate a breathtaking panorama view of a sunset.

Oh well, all things (good or bad) must come to an end. Driscoll soon finds Ann and manages to rescue Ann from Kong while Carl (after smashing his camera and losing everything that he came to Skull Island for) hatches a plot with Captain Englehorn to use Ann as bait and lure and capture the gigantic primate for show in NY. They, of course, eventually succeed as Kong's longing for Ann proves his undoing.

The film then goes into its third and final act where the captured Kong is transported back to NY and is presented as a the central piece of a grotesquely tasteless cabaret show. I will go brief here. Kong will, of course, break free and seek out Ann who finds him. The two will enjoy a brief, peaceful and quite heartwarming (or heartbreaking, depending on your perspective) moment on a frozen lake in Central Park before a frenzied run across rooftops leads to the final ascent up the Empire State Building as seemingly, the entire army goes after him. What happens after, we all know.

I will not delve into individual performances here but will simply say that all of the cast did their job very well. Naomi Watts screams with the best of them but more importantly, establishes a tenderness and understanding with her CGI co-star which helps the audience to sympathise with the giant ape. Jack Black is, well, his usual OTT self but one doesn't go to see Black without expecting anything less and Adrien Brody, well, I never saw him as an action hero (he doesn't have the looks for it) but Jackson somehow frames him like he is one and Brody is, surprisingly, always convincing in his role.

The central character is, of course, King Kong himself and here, as essayed by Andy Serkis, another CGI creation (after LOTR's Gollum) comes alive on screen and matches the live-action actors par for par (which is more than one can ask for from a CGI creation). Kong is, at turns, angry, contemplative, playful, sad, possessive, protective and somehow, always misunderstood. And there in, lies the gist of Kong. A huge, misunderstood and lonely creature who may have finally found a soulmate in Ann but will be denied this companionship because the world, at large, does not understand him, his reasons, his fears and in turn, fears him because of these unknowns. But because Ann understands him (and perhaps the audience as well), she feels and cares for him in a way that others, too busy trying to bring him down, do not.

Too many blockbusters, in their attempts to razzle-dazzle the audience, fill up their screens with CGI and leave out a story and emotions. Some will service their movie with a passable plot but do not create or establish characters that audiences could truly care for. Many a times, the quiet moments they offer are, at best, perfunctory. They lack any real interest in establishing concrete characters and relations. In simple words, they lack heart.

What Peter Jackson has done in "Kong" is not only to use amazing CGI to service a well-known tale and entertain but also to give it an emotional core that lifts it above most other blockbusters. Kong and Ann are given screentime to establish a relationship and hence, despite knowing that Kong isn't really real, I cared for him and felt a certain sadness for his eventual demise. And that is no mean feat.

Roger Ebert called "Kong" one of the best movies of the year. I'm not too sure about that. But it is one of the better movies I have seen this year and it is certainly one of the best popcorn movies (blockbusters) this year. And for that, I will recommend it.

8/10