Shin Godzilla

The real monster all along was … bureaucracy? This movie may be a modern, native reboot of the classic Kaiju story, but it has the political landscape on its mind as much as it does giant lizards. A great deal of the running time contains ruminations about the state of Japans state—the filmmakers are not exactly thrilled with it—as well as that country’s relationship with its American patrons. There’s so much in here about the political situation that the star of the show, Gojira/Godzilla, spends a lot of the time either inactive or not even on the screen. That’s a complaint, but it must also be said that, when the moment comes for the damage to be done, the sequence contains some eye popping visuals—the rampages are very well done, and some of the shots of the big guy within the Tokyo skyline are almost downright artful. The movie is all in Japanese, so it’s difficult to judge if the key players are good actors or if they’re making their own disaster scenes. No matter—the presentation here, though a bit too talky and not quite stompy enough,  still delivers an adequate amount of entertainment for monster movie fans. It may not be an eleven year old boy’s dream film, but it will do.