Studio: Screen Gems
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Producer: Jeremy Bolt, Paul W.S. Anderson, Dennis Berardi, Robert Kulzer, Martin Moszkowicz
Stars: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Meagan Good, Diego Bonita, Josh Helman, Jin Au-Yeung, Ron Perlman
Review Score:
Summary:
An Army Ranger teams up with an alien hunter to battle massive monsters when she is mysteriously transported to another world.
Review:
There are two questions to ask when evaluating whether or not a movie met its mark. The first is, what did you want from the film? The second is, what did the film give you?
I’ve been through enough “Resident Evil” sequels to know what to anticipate when video game adaptation auteur Paul W.S. Anderson teams up with his wife Milla Jovovich, an accomplished actress who in this case can still be classified as a sci-fi action star. Assuming “Monster Hunter” would follow suit, and why wouldn’t it, that would mean a bombastic FX extravaganza packed to bursting with eye-exploding imagery, stunt-filled spectacles, things smashing, vehicles rolling, people falling, and just general cinematic chaos. In other words, you want to see Milla Jovovich kicking the asses of colossal creatures using rocket launchers, ornately oversized blades, and a whole lot of karate-kicking fury? Yeah, “Resident Evil” might be under new management, but “Monster Hunter” delivers familiar flavors from the chef’s signature menu.
What “Monster Hunter” doesn’t deliver though, is anything resembling a story. I never expected the movie to be deep. One look at this pair’s track record together and you know exactly what kind of soda pop sugar rush you’re getting into. But I didn’t think “Monster Hunter” would be almost completely bereft of fiction to fuel its big-budget bluster. Even as empty epic entertainment, “Monster Hunter” still slips on the satisfaction factor because I haven’t seen an action movie this shallow since “Sucker Punch.”
No seriously, what even is “Monster Hunter’s” story? It has a bare bones setup. Milla Jovovich plays Army Ranger Natalie Artemis. Known names like T.I. and Diego Boneta make up some of the soldiers on her team, except they all die in the film’s first act, rendering their relationships to her irrelevant.
A mysterious lightning cloud transports Artemis to another world where she meets “Hunter,” a man merely known by his trade since he speaks an alien language and can’t reveal his real name. It’s one of a thousand head-scratching creative decisions. Even though the duo gets “ha-ha” interactions like Hunter learning the delights of a Hershey’s chocolate bar or the obligatory fistfight based on initial misunderstandings, their inability to verbally communicate cools their chemistry-absent connection to a basic warrior’s bond.
Hunter teaches Artemis how to battle the behemoths in his world. And so we see the requisite montages of armoring up, performing gymnastics, and drawing swords while a drone camera sweeps around their sensei sessions. After that, the two of them, uh, fight more monsters. That’s literally the extent of everything there is to “Monster Hunter.”
The film doesn’t even have a real ending. Looking like they ran out of time, money, or interest in finishing the edit, “Monster Hunter” simply smashes to end credits smack dab in the center of a climactic confrontation. I suppose the clunky conclusion can’t be criticized too much. With aimless or vague goals motivating everyone’s meager movements between Point A and Point “Huh?,” what arcs are there to wrap up?
I came close to spraying my screen with a spit take when I read an interview where Anderson said he was drawn to the ‘Monster Hunter’ game series because of its “incredibly beautiful, immersive world.” Where is this mythology in the movie? If “Monster Hunter” had a smidgen of narrative depth or more detail in its designs, I might have been able to get into it as brain-deadening popcorn fun. But most of the settings are boringly bleak deserts with white skies and beige sand. Monsters are depicted in dark caves, covered by clouds, showered with silt, or otherwise obscured to further fuzz effects that can only be rated as B+ at best because they’re blurred 75% of the time.
Making a “Monster Hunter” movie was a passion project of Anderson’s for more than a decade. All that time to marinate, ruminate, and retool, yet the script still makes fundamental mistakes in really rudimentary ways. The entire movie builds Artemis to be a badass like “Resident Evil’s” Alice, which one would expect when Anderson showcases his wife. Except instead of her being the hero who saves the day, Artemis ends up in jeopardy during the final fight and Hunter has to rescue her like some silent film damsel tied to train tracks. Beyond sidekick saviors, it’s bizarre that someone would take an imaginative fantasy franchise filled with sentient feline chefs, Ron Perlman in a weird wig, big boats sailing on sands where massive monsters lurk, and then populate that world with generic military men firing guns at a green screen.
‘Monster Hunter’ is a series I’ve always been curious about, but have never found the right jumping-on point to get into the games. I won’t judge the source material based on the yawn-inducing movie, although the film did enough damage that my desire to visit the property properly has suffered a serious setback. A mid-credits cliffhanger coda presumes there’ll be further installments as far as films go. That’s not wishful thinking. That’s delusional. But if a sequel promises to be as robotically bland as this one, we’ll be playing ‘Monster Hunter’ games off of PlayStation holo-chips in our heads well before there’d be a reason to get excited about a future film.
Review Score: 45
While the movie works as an atmosphere-building slow burn, the lack of substance in the story makes “Black Cab” harder to get into as a narrative.