If there’s one thing you have to admire about Kong: Skull Island it is that the film knows what it is and gets right down to the action/adventure and monster mayhem without wasting our time on needless subplots or attempts to create something more “elevated”.

Set (for the most part) at the tail end of the Vietnam War, the film features an interesting cast led by Tom Hiddleston (his character is named James Conrad and you just know they were itching to call him Joseph Conrad), Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, and John C. Reilly.

The characters these actors play, by and large, don’t have a whole lot of depth but in this film, it doesn’t matter all that much.  Just know that Hiddleston’s character is the intrepid and independent jungle tracker/explorer.  Larson’s character is the journalist and anti-war person, which puts her squarely up against Jackson’s military commander of the ops and, as the movie progresses, more and more deranged Kurtz-like personality.  John Goodman is the brains behind the operation, the one who sets things in motion and carries his own secrets.  Finally, Reilly is the castaway and -perhaps- crazy veteran of WWII who has survived on Skull Island all this time.

Basically, the movie goes like this: The Vietnam War is ending and the U.S. has a tight window of opportunity to explore a mysterious -and unexplored- island that locals in the area have avoided.  A permanent cloud bank/hurricane shields the island from outsiders and, when our assembled group head over there, they find more than (most) of them bargained for.

Kong: Skull Island isn’t 2001: A Space Odyssey or Citizen Kane.  Neither is it the best “monster” movie I’ve ever seen (that distinction would probably go to the original King Kong and Godzilla).  While it doesn’t necessarily deliver the best monster movie evah, it delivers on the thrills and gives us engaging characters to both root for and boo.   It is, in the end, a supremely competently done Americanized version of the old Toho monster movies and, as such, hits its target well.

If you do catch the film, make sure to stay through to the end credits.  Like the Marvel films, there’s a very amusing end sequence that hints at the direction future movies set in this “monsterverse” may go.

I’ll give the movie’s makers this much: They really want to pursue those old Toho features!

Recommended… especially to fans of monster movie mayhem.