Monster Hunter (2020)
Alternate Title: Michael Bay’s Wet Dream
Run Time: 1h 40min
Plot: Mila Jovovich got tired of fighting zombies, so she decided to fight some big-a** monsters!
Tl;dr Review: The movie knows you wanna see monster fights, and it delivers it quite well, to my surprise to be honest! Just don’t expect any story.
When to Watch: In the evening, or at night.
With Whom to Watch: Don’t watch it alone. Watch it with friends, or family members. Depending on the person you’re dating, it can work as a date movie too!
Full Review: Have you watched Transformers and felt like their whacky story wasn’t letting you enjoy the ample action that was there? Or, have you watched Godzilla, and Kong; and felt like there wasn’t enough action in those movies? Like you didn’t get to see Godzilla or King Kong in their full glory? The director of this movie, Paul Anderson, probably felt like that too. So, he said —
Let’s get one thing straight, Monster Hunter is a movie based on a video game where you go and kill monsters again and again (something known as grinding or farming), make weapons from the fallen monsters’ body parts, and then you go and kill even bigger monsters. The people who made the movie knew it, so they gave all the efforts in the action, and didn’t try to come up with a story. And I applaud them for the honesty!
Now, in case of action, it’s more like Michael Bay-esque action. You see big CGI monsters getting hit in their faces with explosions! Pure dumb fun! The monsters look good, they allow you to get a good look at them and don’t try to hide them in darkness or in the sand too much. The protagonists series of actions were edited in a good way, so you always get a sense of what’s going on. It’s not 100 cuts per second editing.
As for acting — Mila Jovovich and Tony Jaa got most of the screen time, and they didn’t disappoint. Their acting was on-point!
As expected, it’s not a dialogue heavy movie. In fact you can probably count the dialogues in one hand. But there wasn’t any cringe line, or catch phrase. It was rather clean! But what got me was the sense of humor. Thank God that they didn’t have any tropey comedic relief character! Rather you see the characters crack little jokes here and there that feel natural and genuinely crack you up! Not to mention it enhanced their on-screen chemistry, especially Mila and Tony’s. The cleverness and restraint they showed in that regard isn’t something that I expected at all!
The cinematography was good. If they had a little less night time scenes, it would’ve been better. But I understand that they had a small budget and good CGI is expensive. So, that was understandable.
Now, the question is — is it an entertaining movie? Yes! Definitely! They took all the tropes of action movies, kept the good ones, and reversed the rest! You get more monster fights(most of which is in daylight), good editing, clean dialogues, surprising sense of humor, and good acting! If you’re a fan of the game, you’ll like it. If you’re looking for a popcorn flick, you’ll like it. What I’m trying to say is — if you’re an action movie fan, you should definitely watch it! Hell, watch it instead of the Monster-verse movies or Transformers!
Final Score: If Monster Hunter 2 comes out, I’ll watch it/10
