King Kong [WS]

Overview

One of the greatest adventure stories in Hollywood history gets a new interpretation in this action drama from Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson. In the early 1930s, Carl Denham (Jack Black) is a daring filmmaker and adventurer who has gained a reputation for his pictures documenting wildlife in remote and dangerous jungle lands; despite the objections of his backers, Denham plans to film his next project aboard an ocean vessel en route to Skull Island, an uncharted island he discovered on a rare map. Correctly assuming his cast and crew would be wary of such a journey, Denham has told them they're traveling to Singapore, but before they set sail, his leading lady drops out of the project. Needing a beautiful actress willing to take a risk, Denham finds Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), a beautiful but down-on-her-luck vaudeville performer, and offers her the role; cautious but eager to work, Darrow takes the role, and onboard the ship she strikes up a romance with Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), a respected playwright hired by Denham to write the script for his latest epic. When Denham and company arrive on Skull Island, the natives react with savage violence, but they happen to be the least of their worries. Skull Island is a sanctuary for prehistoric life, and lording it over the dinosaurs and other giant beasts is Kong, a 25-foot-tall gorilla who can outfight any creature on Earth. The natives kidnap Darrow, giving her to Kong as an offering to appease the giant beast; Denham and his men set out to find her, with Driscoll bravely determined to save the woman he loves. Eventually, Driscoll finds Darrow and Denham outwits Kong, intending to take the giant ape back to New York for display. But Kong has bonded with Darrow, and his attraction to her proves to be his undoing. Andy Serkis, who provided the body movements for Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings pictures, performed similar duties on King Kong, studying gorillas so he could mimic their actions, which were then used as the basis for the special-effects crew's digital animation of the great ape.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/28/2006
UPC:	0025192626029
Original Release:	2005
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	STUDIO DISTRIBUTION SERVS LLC
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	3:08:00
Sales rank:	30,903

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Naomi Watts	Ann Darrow
Jack Black	Carl Denham
Adrien Brody	Jack Driscoll
Thomas Kretschmann	Capt. Englehorn
Colin Hanks	Preston
Jamie Bell	Jimmy
Lobo Chan	Choy
John Sumner	Herb(ert)
Craig Hall	Mike
Kyle Chandler	Bruce Baxter
William Johnson	Manny
Mark Hadlow	Harry
Geraldine Brophy	Maude,Venture Crew
David Denis	Taps
David Pittu	Weston
Pip Mushin	Zelman
Peter McKenzie	Venture Crew
Jim Knobeloch	Thuggish Executive
Ric Herbert	Sleazy Executive
Lee Donahue	Studio Assistant
Tom Hobbs	Young assistant
Tiriel Mora	Fruit Vendor
Lee Hartley	Radio Operator
Ray Woolf	Helmsman
Billy Jackson	NY Child,NY Child
Tania Rodger	Hooverville Mother
Samuel Taylor	Hooverville Child
Philip Grieve	Laughing Man
Jacinta Wawatai	Feral Child
Matthew Dravitzki	Trampled Theater-goer
Andy Serkis	Lumpy the Cook
Evan Parke	Hayes
Frank Edwards	Venture Crew
Crawford Thomson	Venture Crew
Will Wallace	Venture Crew
James Newton Howard	Composer

Technical Credits

Peter Jackson

Fran Walsh

Philippa Boyens

Peter Jackson	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Fran Walsh	Screenwriter,Producer
Philippa Boyens	Screenwriter
Jan Blenkin	Producer
Carolynne Cunningham	Producer
Richard Taylor	Special Effects
Joe Letteri	Special Effects
Stephen Ingram	Special Effects
Victoria Burrows	Casting
Liz Mullane	Casting
John Hubbard	Casting,Casting
Shane Dawson	Stunts
Chris Anderson	Stunts
Kirk Maxwell	Stunts,Stunts
Ethan Van der Ryn	Sound/Sound Designer
Michael Semanick	Sound Mixer
Christopher Boyes	Sound Mixer
Michael Hedges	Sound Mixer
Hammond Peek	Sound Mixer,Sound/Sound Designer
Edgar Wallace	Executive Producer
Annette Wullems	Producer
Damian Lund	Special Effects
Mike McDonald	Special Effects
Petar Zivkovic	Special Effects
Daniel Andrews	Stunts
Mana Hira Davis	Stunts
Winham Hammond	Stunts
Andrew Stehlin	Stunts
Jonathan Costelloe	Stunts
Brian Van't Hul	Special Effects
Ann Robinson	Casting
Ernest B. Schoedsack	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Peter Jackson's King Kong is a spectacle of big-budget adventurism that indulges in flashy childhood monster-movie fetishes while upping the original's sentimental quotient to new grandiose levels. Filled with furious action and exotic locales, the film gives Kong a much broader canvas to wreak havoc upon in this retooled version of the famed story. The big screen's largest primate has also been given more time to do so, with a three-hour-plus running time weighing heavily on the audience's shoulders as each act is expanded to mixed results. Needless backstories take center stage in the beginning, just as the middle tends to blur into one long chase sequence that is downright excessive in its scale and endless barrage of thrills. Viewers might find themselves caught up in the breathless imagery, but one senses that Jackson isn't flexing his storyteller muscles as much as he's fulfilling his own boyhood dreams of the prehistoric rock 'em, sock 'em material. In that way, the director momentarily ceases to involve his audience in the drama, opting instead to deliver fast-paced action with multiple icky, gooey, ferocious creatures filling the screen to dizzying degrees. Ironically, the picture's strongest moments are its quietest, as Kong and Naomi Watts build a sincere and touching bond that goes far beyond the creepy unrequited love of the duo in the 1933 original. It's this relationship that fuels the bravura third-act opening with a lavish and witty recreation of the villagers from the original, as dancers cavort Broadway-style in front of the broken and battered giant ape. What follows is a miraculous recreation of one of the most famous scenes in movie history that is as heartbreaking an experience as any. Time will tell how the film will be viewed years down the road, but one thing is for sure -- this isn't the King Kong that Peter Jackson would have made before Lord of the Rings (which was originally the plan). The film might benefit from the sensitivity gleaned from Tolkien's trilogy, but on the flip side of Hollywood's cursed coin, his unlimited power and success no doubt bloated what was once a slim tale of beauty and the beast and turned it into a personal journey of obsessive boyhood dreams come true, not unlike the film's monomaniacal filmmaker Carl Denham.