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Times are hard in Depression-era New York.
Determined to make his mark in film-making, Carl Denham (Jack Black) plans an ambitious movie-making trip to mythical Skull Island after his last film fails to please his financers. He meets and convinces jobless and penniless vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) to join him as leading lady. An odd team composed of Denham and his cameraman, Ann, and playwright John Driscoll (Adrien Brody), and the boat's unsuspecting crew who had thought they were sailing for exotic Singapore. Navigating by an old map that no one except Denham believes in, they sail through misty uncharted seas, founder on rocks, until it's too late to turn back. Savages attack them; they run back to their ship to escape, but the fierce savages manage to abduct Ann. The men return to the island to rescue the actress who is by now being offered as a sacrifice to an ape whose size may be guessed by the earthshaking roar he makes through the forests.
It's not enough to say that King Kong is entertaining.
It is a magnificent and astounding epic which can take you like a time machine through 188 minutes to another world. Director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings trilogy
) outdoes himself in this film that utilizes the computer not merely to produce special effects to make the audience "ooh" and "aah" over the marvels of the computer age, but more
to reproduce breath-taking beauty that computers can never create. Watching other movies using CGI (computer generated images, as those in Matrix, Harry Potter, and
countless others), one is often aware that the fiction on the screen owes its life to computer technicians.
Not so with King Kong circa 2005 whose visual realism and heart-warming story can arouse wonder over creation and not computers. Characterization is superb, making each role as unique as a thumbprint.
King Kong is a love story--rather, a story of love. Between a beauty and a beast, but there's nothing bestial about it. It is a story of love because it is a story of respect: a wordless bond develops between a 25-foot simian and a fragile vaudeville actress that shows, most of all, how respect for a creature as it is created can lead to the flowering of a relationship between human and animal. The woman, who is captured to be an amusing toy for a giant ape, grows into a beloved one. The animal, which starts as a capricious beast transforms into a knight in shining armor who towards the end protects his beloved even from her own species. Much is lost in the telling of this amazing story--you'd better watch it, or you'd miss one of this year's most astonishing movies.
(Date Reviewed: 15 December 2005)
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