KING KONG (1933)

title: KING KONG

year: 1933

cast: Robert Armstrong, Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, James Flavin

directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

rating: *****

If you love a movie enough and consider it flawless, a review will simply be propaganda. Well here comes some propaganda, which won't merit a great, or even a good, review, but more like... preaching. KING KONG is an historic film, and like anything tagged "classic" or "groundbreaking", it's often misunderstood as to what made it stand-out or, to use another cliche, "timeless". The special effects/stop-motion animation is, in today's standards, quite dated - but it's how close we are to (and move along with) the action that still makes it work. Every swing, every bite, every scream, every roar, and all the chasing-around puts us in front row seats. The sparse dialog is corny at times, and the actors aren't exactly Gable and Lombard. But there are no wasted words; every syllable leads to the main destination, Skull Island. And once we arrive we leap right into dealing with the situation (with some terrific eye-candy, especially those dinosaurs) and then, in the final third taking place in New York, we're given a climax that cannot be done today. Kong was a monster. A native-chomping, subway-breaking, woman-dropping, cold-blooded beast. And while you genuinely feel for the big guy, he's a killer, not a sympathetic Vegetarian driven to madness by evil exploitative humans, like both remakes. And in that, we can enjoy both loving and battling him at the same time. No message is needed. An anti-hero monster movie without any bullshit. That's why it cannot be outdone with political-correctness or CGI. Amen.