Release Date:
12/14/2005
The thing you gotta know about Kong, Adrien Brodys character says, is he ends up destroying the things he loves the most. And just about everything else he touches, judging from the non-stop carnage the big lug causes while battling everything from rampaging dinosaurs to circling airplanes. Lord of the cinema, Peter Jackson, has outdone himself with his remake of the 1933 classic, delivering the kind of breathtakingly epic adventure that marked America's early love affair with talking pictures. Jackson clearly loves the source materialthe quintessential "beauty and the beast" story that had audiences glued to the edge of their seats in the '30s and will have them lining up again in a new millennium. The 800-pound gorilla still stirs up things on Skull Island, wreaks havoc in New York, and grabs a blonde and goes sightseeing on top of the Empire State Building. But this time around, he does it betterthe new version is so jaw-droppingly spectacular in every visual sense, its easy to see why Jackson wanted to breathe new life into a seemingly tired tale. At three hours (nearly twice the length of the 33 Kong), the picture is probably 20 minutes too long. In fact, its one solid hour before the boat carrying an intrepid group of daring filmmakers even reaches Skull Island, but the final two hours rock so hard, you wont be checking your watch during the spectacle that is Kong.