Shin Godzilla

Godzilla as a cinematic franchise has been around for a bit over 60 years and 31 films. So you'd think there's very little new to be said abut the creature. Shows up, stomps Tokyo, battles something, stomps off again til the next sequel.

But Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's film is a little different. For a start, it ignores most of that 60 years of history and starts all over again with the Japanese government facing an apparently brand new strange radioactive creature which changes forms repeatedly over the course of the film. And gosh does the Japanese Government have a lot of meetings. It's pretty much "The West Wing" meets Godzilla, with lots of fast-paced discussion scenes, including a fair bit of bureaucratic ineptness going on before we get the right number of heroic scientists working together to try to crack what the hell this thing is and how on earth it can be stopped. 

Yes, the humans are less interesting than the monster but they're never particularly dull and the film does ratchet along rather well. It's intriguing that there's some distinct anti-Americanism going on here with suspicions about how they may be involved, although this does also give rise to the one big flaw-  the mainly subtitled film goes non-subtitled when the characters speak English, and by far the worst English is spoken by a character who's meant to be an American representative. 

Obviously if you're looking for something with a particular amount of depth ... no, this is still a Godzilla movie, go elsewhere. But if you're okay with just going along with the destruction and conspiracy, this is quite an enjoyable flick.