Godzilla Minus One Review

Yamazaki does the thing the franchise had almost given up on, which is to make the monster mean something specific. Setting the film in 1947, in a country with no army, no government worth the name and a population being told its survival was a disgrace, turns Godzilla into a continuation of the war rather than a spectacle, and the protagonist's shame at having lived is the actual engine. Ryunosuke Kamiki plays Shikishima as a man convinced his life is already forfeit, and the film's closing argument, that survival is a duty rather than a failure, is a real rebuke to the culture that produced him.

The Ginza sequence is the best staged monster attack in years, with a heat ray that detonates like an air burst and a shockwave that flattens the frame. The visual effects were built by a crew of roughly thirty-five and shame far more expensive work. The melodrama is broad, the dialogue states its themes plainly, and a late reprieve softens what the film has spent two hours arguing. It is still the most emotionally serious Godzilla ever made.