Godzilla

Director: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Brian Cranston, Ken Watanabe
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 123 mins. Reviewed in May 2014

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Rating notes: Science fiction themes and violence

Fairly heralded as a return to form for the lizard king after the maligned 1998 American misfire of the same name, Gareth Edward’s ‘Godzilla’ is grounded and gritty, anchoring superb visuals to a competent human story.

Joe Brody (Cranston) works as the head engineer for a Japanese nuclear power station. Detecting strange tremors, he orders the plant closed, but not before an unidentifiable disaster strikes and the entire complex is wiped out, killing his wife. Fifteen years later, Joe is consumed by his theory of an enormous creature destroying the plant, and at last his military son Ford (Taylor-Johnson) agrees to help him break into the exclusion zone around the abandoned site. They stumble onto a monster-sized cover-up stretching back to the 1950s, and the Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism (or MUTO) held captive there breaks loose. Another dormant MUTO is awoken by its cries and their trail of destruction begins. But another ancient creature is awakened by their communication, one with which audiences may be familiar, and it may be humanities last hope.

From the opening credits, it is clear that this is an iteration of the monster with a deep mythology very much rooted in real world events of the past 60 years. Names scroll forth over footage of the Castle Bravo nuclear tests, with subtle, VFX clues about the titular beast’s origins and interactions with humanity peppered throughout. This approach is indicative of much of the film – it has a clever pragmatism which allows a balance of the emotional and spectacular elements to be negotiated quite fairly. Director Gareth Edwards – who won the job following his appropriately titled, micro-budget debut feature ‘Monsters’ – keeps the dual plates of story and effects spinning together, and importantly manages not to beleaguer audiences with too much of either. Occasionally, the impact of the massive destruction wrought is overwhelmed by its sheer scale, and the film’s pathos is largely confined to the losses witnessed or felt in close quarters by our protagonist Ford. However, even the carnage feels more harrowing than recent releases with similar obliteration, such as ‘Pacific Rim’ and ‘Man of Steel’, and much of this can be attributed to the sober realism which Edwards imbues, along with screenwriter Max Borenstein’s well researched take on governments’ responses to such an enormous threat. The escalation of the story is intelligent, building to the final showdown via gradual set pieces nicely, though the intermittent reliance on blind patriotism is somewhat cloying and patronising.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is resilient in the lead as Ford, holding the action together though sometimes – albeit rarely – out of his depth in the emotional scenes. The remainder of the cast fares better, with Elizabeth Olsen as Ford’s wife Elle proving her lauded work in ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’ was no fluke; she is maternal, tender and sturdy as the script requires. Brian Cranston moves powerfully between a husband grieving his wife’s death for which he may be responsible, and a fierce crusader for truth reminiscent of his television work on ‘Breaking Bad’. The remainder of the cast are reliable, particularly Ken Watanabe for keeping a straight face delivering the (B movie-esque) line ‘Let them fight’.

Behind the camera, the work is extremely strong. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey composes gorgeous, haunting interplay between smoke, light, shadow and rubble. The HALO jump sequence highlighted in the trailers has shots of such unusual, apocalyptic beauty that they verge on painterly vistas perhaps more common in highbrow art house film. An assaults to the senses, the sound editing team have created a soundscape bristling with ferocity – Godzilla has never sounded so gargantuan or cataclysmic, and the antihero’s infamous roar impresses in its restrained deployment. In demand composer Alexandre Desplat creates an equally sonorous score, ranging from intimate moments following our cast of damaged characters to a great sonic depth in the multiple monster battles. Again, the HALO sequence stands out for its outstanding operatic choir backing.

Godzilla delivers on its promise. Godzilla is ‘a god, for all intents and purposes’; here we see a god who is both saviour and destroyer, and a film which is focused on the micro human story and the macro battle for Earth. Subtle? No. Thrilling? You bet.