Director: Takashi Yamazaki

Stars: Ryunosuke Kamiki Minami Hamabe, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Sakura Ando

The first home-grown Godzilla film since 2016’s ‘Shin Godzilla’ winds the clock back to the aftermath of WWII to immensely satisfying and thematically rich effect.

A 1944 prologue on Pacific island Odo has kamikaze pilot Koichi (Kamiki) feigning a mechanical failure on his plane in order to get out of his mission. As he is being berated as a coward by a fellow soldier, a T. rex-sized Godzilla appears and attacks the group.

Cut to after the war when Koichi has returned home to find a ruined city and an empty family house. He encounters a young woman Noriko (Hamabe) who is on the run after stealing food. Noriko leaves Koichi holding her baby, but returns when the coast is clear. It is revealed that the baby is an orphan Noriko found abandoned on the street.

They become a surrogate family, but are beset by money worries, so Koichi takes a dangerous but very well-paid job on a tugboat deployed to clear mines. His shipmates are gruff captain Akistu (Sasaki), amiable boffin Noda (Yoshioka) and a self-conscious young man Shiro (Yamada) who was too young to fight in the war. Cue some amiable badinage between the crew, pleasingly redolent of the Hawksian affectionate male rivalry of Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’.

On one of the trips Koichi encounters Godzilla again and is horrified to discover that, due to the atomic bomb, the monster has grown to ginormous size. In an attempt to rid himself of the gnawing feelings of shame and survivor’s guilt, Koichi volunteers for the ragtag civilian-led mission (the Japanese military have had their hands tied by the Allies) to defeat the beast as it makes its way towards Tokyo.

This, the first period piece Godzilla, boasts a vivid depiction of the immediate post-war years as a defeated Japan tried to dust itself down and remake the nation from the ground up. As well as being populated by vivid characters, the script tackles notions of renewal, redemption and government corruption, while nodding to Ishiro Honda’s 1954 original in its initial broadly sombre tone and thunderously parping score, while delivering the requisite contemporary spectacle and epic feel, on reportedly a modest budget of $15 million. Director Yamazaki is a visual effects man and clearly knows how to get bang for his yen. Consequently this deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

A roaring success.

Godzilla: Minus One is released on 15th December.

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm