Monster Hunter – Big Action Blast
Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson (Screenplay)
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Ron Perlman, T.I. Diego Boneta, Meagan Good, Josh Helman, Jin Au-Yeung
Plot: When Lt. Artemis and her loyal soldiers are transported to a new world, they engage in a desperate battle for survival against enormous enemies with incredible powers. Feature film based on the video game by Capcom.
Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Monster Hunter starts when Captain Artemis (Jovovich) and her unit, Lincoln (T.I), Marshall (Boneta), Dash (Good), Steeler (Helman) and Axe (Au-Yeung) are searching for a missing unit, only to find themselves caught up in a sudden storm, finding themselves in a desert that shouldn’t be there.
In this world the unit finds themselves under attack by a unknown monster, one their weapons can’t defeat, a mysterious man known only as Hunter (Jaa) is trying to warn them and takes Artemis to safety, needing to let their language barrier work together to survive.
Thoughts on Monster Hunter
Characters & Performances – Captain Artemis has her own military unit, she has them working as a team, she will fight with them and use their strengths to keep the unit safe. She is left helpless in the battle after they are transported to a new unknown world, where she must learn to adapt to survive. Continuing to be a strong fighting leading character, this is everything you would expect to see in a Milla Jovovich performance. Hunter is the man that has been fighting the monsters for a while, he tries to warn the soldiers of what is coming. He is prepared to fight with different weapons, he doesn’t speak English and must find a way to work with Artemis to fight the enemy waiting for them. Tony Jaa is one of the biggest draws for the action fan here, he does give us a fun action character that works very well through this film. When it comes to the rest of the cast, we don’t get to meet many more characters, the military unit don’t get to make an impact at all and anyone else we meet is here just to fill the blanks on the bigger picture.
Story – The story here follows a military unit that get transported to another world, one that is filled with terrifying monsters that are happy to hunt the new prey, one soldier must try to protect her unit with the help of a mysterious figure who has been fighting here for years. This is a film without the deepest story, it does follow the idea of someone being placed into a new world, with a new enemy, that they must learn quickly to survive against. We get a lot of our one soldier needing to adapt, which at times does feel like Pitch Black for how certain things happen. We don’t learn the bigger picture to much later in the story, which could well have been placed her to create a bigger world in the future.
Themes – Monster Hunter doesn’t hold back on any of the action we get to see, we get chase, bullets flying, chases with monsters that you wouldn’t have seen before, it does feel relentless for the opening 30-40 minutes, which can leave you wondering about the context of what is happening, which we don’t learn more about till later in the film. The special effects are brilliant, with the creature creations looking flawless in the battles we find them involved in.
Monster Hunter is a big enjoyable action blast, that might only be the beginning for a bigger world, but is one we can sit back and enjoy.