A One Mann’s Movies review of “Godzilla Minus One” (2023).
Now, in any other week I would have given a Godzilla movie a WIDE berth. Ditto Transformer movies and Kong movies. I just don’t see the point of vacuous, thinly-painted characters battling CGI-realised monsters or – even worse – CGI monsters battling other CGI monsters (e.g. Kong vs Godzilla). How as an audience are we supposed to engage with that? However, my Flickering Dreams colleague Rev. Andy Godfrey liked the film so much that he was looking to reopen his Top 10 for the year (already published in Sorted magazine) that had me intrigued. So I duly went to see “Godzilla Minus One” and was very pleasantly surprised by what I found.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
Plot Summary:
We are in Japan in 1945. Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikazi pilot who lands on Odo Island to ‘repair’ his plane. But while there, the repair facility is attacked by something from the sea… a creature that the locals call ‘Godzilla’.
Certification:
UK: 12; US: PG-13. (From the BBFC web site: “Moderate threat, violence, brief bloody images”).
Talent:
Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Hidetaka Yoshioka.
Directed by: Takashi Yamazaki.
Written by: Takashi Yamazaki.
Twitter Handle: #GodzillaMinusOne.
Running Time: 2h 4m.
The boat chase reminiscent of the Orca and the barrels. (Source: Piece of Magic Entertainment).
“Godzilla Minus One” Review:
Positives:
- Well, slap me with a wet deep-sea fish! Here’s a film that takes its beautiful sweet time to build the character of Koichi: his personal fear and shame; how he is suddenly encumbered with a ‘family’ in the form of Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe) and the unbearably cute Akiko (Sae Nagatani); how he can’t emotionally connect due to his turbulent past. It’s all deep stuff and it makes you fundamentally care about what happens to the rag-tag little family during the subsequent action.
- The action scenes are really well done. Like REALLY well done. The special effects may have been done on the cheap compared to some Western-produced films (the film’s overall budget is only $15m) but they stand up really well. There’s a boat-chase scene that is utterly thrilling, reminding me, bizarrely, of the Three-Barrel chase involving the Orca in “Jaws”. And an attack of Godzilla on the Ginza district of Tokyo is spectacular.
- The use of slo-mo, sound (or lack of) and dramatic music (by Naoki Satô) is brilliant and results in some of the most dramatic moments in the narrative coming over in an awe-inspiring way.
- I loved the bubbly way a curious property of physics is deployed by the ‘Doc’ (Hidetaka Yoshioka) to try to defeat Godzilla. A great idea (if utterly implausible!).
- I’ve read somewhere that the Japanese obsess with Godzilla due to their feelings of guilt about being on the ‘wrong side’ in WW2. This film certainly leans into that idea, as there is much soul-searching about Japanese bureaucracy and the wasteful loss of life due to the ‘Japanese attitude’. It makes for an interesting script.
Negatives:
- There’s a curious discrepancy in the use of extras from scene to scene. There seems to be hundreds of Supporting Artists deployed for the Ginza scenes. But for some of the earlier attacks on the warships it seem to show about 10 crewmen, in a line, sliding across the deck. It all feels unnecessarily cheap… like “Star Trek TOS”.
Adding real heart to the story…. Ryunosuke Kamiki as Koichi Shikishima and….
… Minami Hamabe as Noriko Oishi. (Source: Piece of Magic Entertainment).
Monkeys?
There is no proper “monkey” either mid-credit or end-credit. But there is an audio one… of Godzilla’s thunderous footsteps (“Jurassic Park” style) before a terrifying roar.
Summary Thoughts on “Godzilla Minus One”
I never thought that I would give 4*s to a Japanese-language Godzilla movie. But it really is impressively good stuff and eminently watchable. Recommended for a fun night out. It’s also clearly a big success… at the time of writing, it’s made $64 million on its $15 million budget, so the producers must be delighted!
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Trailer for “Godzilla Minus One”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvSrHIX5a-0 .
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