Epic remake of the adventure classic from acclaimed director Peter Jackson. In Depression-era New York, unscrupulous filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) is desperate to find a leading lady for his new picture. After a chance encounter, naive actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) takes the role, and travels with Denham and sensitive scriptwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) to the mysterious Skull Island, deep in the Indian Ocean. There the filmmakers discover a secret, savage civilisation that time forgot, and that worships a terrifying, gigantic ape called Kong (a motion-capture performance from Andy Serkis). When Ann is captured to be sacrificed to Kong, the ape becomes obsessed with her. Denham uses this obsession to help capture Kong and transport him back to New York, where he hopes he can make a fortune from exhibiting the creature. But after Kong escapes, the ape unleashes his awesome power against the city in an attempt to find Ann, the woman he truly loves, leading to a tragic conclusion atop the Empire State Building.

Amazon.co.uk Review

The extended version of Peter Jackson's King Kong adds 13 minutes to the running time--fortunately those 13 minutes include two dynamic action scenes and no material has been added to the movie's belaboured set-up, which tries to give depth to these quintessentially b-movie characters with a clumsy patchwork of melodrama and in-jokes. But once movie-maker Carl Denham (, School of Rock) and his crew finally arrive at Skull Island, the movie kicks into gear with spectacular action, technical wizardry, and genuine feeling. Though Kong seems crafted to dazzle the eye on the giant screen, the overlong structure improves when you can take an intermission at will. At home, each scene can be approached on its own terms, be it the insanely choreographed battle between Kong and three T. Rexes or the subtle and multi-layered interplay between Ann Darrow (, Mulholland Drive) and Kong (played, through motion-capture technology, by Andy Serkis, who previously played the similarly animated Gollum in Jackson's Lord of the Rings). The addition of a rampaging ceratops and an underwater race with what the movie's crew dubbed a "piranhadon" not only add more eye candy, but provide some valuable moments of character development. But in the end, that's frosting on the cake; when the movie's weaknesses and strengths are weighed, the emotional power of the fantastical relationship between a woman and a giant ape is a real cinematic achievement. --Bret Fetzer