128 mins
Cast Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, James Cromwell, Jeff Goldblum
Director J A Bayona
“She is the second most intelligent creature on the planet” says a scientist about returning raptor Blue, judging by how quickly our heroes agree to return to Isla Nubar, it’s safe to say that humans aren’t the first. Three years have passed since the events of Jurassic World and, after a fantastic cold opening scene, we find that the island is facing an imminent volcanic explosion.
Claire Dearing (Howard) the operations manager from Jurassic World, is now a dinosaur rights activist desperately trying to gather support to evacuate the animals before said explosion renders them extinct once again. While governments around the world are reluctant to help, Benjamin Lockwood (Cromwell), a hither-to unmentioned business partner of John Hammond approaches Claire, through his business partner Eli Mills (Spall) with a proposition to smuggle the dinosaurs to safety. In order for this plan to work Claire needs the specialist abilities of Owen Grady (Pratt) so heads out to recruit him, it doesn’t take too much convincing.
The island based section of the film is exhilarating, almost non-stop action. The threat of the volcano escalating throughout keeps the adrenaline levels almost unbearably high, there a few callbacks to previous instalments (a car wing mirror being my own personal favourite) and a scene that brought me as close to tears for a CG animal than anything since War for the planet of the apes.
Once the action returns to the mainland the tone switches from action to tension, as we discover a newly created Indoraptor which is handily colour coded so as not to confuse the audience (blue = good, yellow = evil) is now among us and the isolated, storm-lashed mansion is used to good effect.
While the CG is largely excellent the main strength of the film for me was the two leads, Howard and Pratt must be two of the three most likeable stars in the world right now (Emma Stone in case you were wondering) and their chemistry shines throughout, even the usual ‘Dino- fodder’ support team are actually quite enjoyable. The villains of the piece can be a little overly villainous and the film does suffer from Annoying Kid Syndrome but those are only slight gripes during an immensely enjoyable two hours that leaves you wanting more and sets up the next intriguing chapter in the Jurassic story very nicely.
★★★★☆
No comments:
Post a Comment