2005’s “King Kong” is an interesting remake directed by Peter Jackson (“The Frighteners”). I absolutely love the original 1933 film and this remake does a good job in that it seems very much to be in the same adventurous spirit as the original classic.

A film crew head towards the mysterious Skull Island where they discover the mighty gorilla beast that is King Kong (Andy Serkis “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”). The beautiful Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts “The Ring”, “The Impossible”) is taken captive by Kong so the crew go on a mission to rescue her and then also decide to take the beast back to New York City.

Naomi Watts is good as Ann Darrow. Jack Black (“Nacho Libre”) seems like a really odd choice for the film director, Carl Denham, and while he wasn’t bad, he wasn’t anything special. Adrien Brody (“The Pianist”) was good as Jack Driscoll. My favourite character was actually action star Bruce Baxter, who is played wonderfully by Kyle Chandler (“Zero Dark Thirty”). The native islanders are a little scary and rather enjoyable. King Kong looks fantastic and so do all the other creatures in this film; the special effects are very convincing for the most part.

“King Kong” features some terrific action sequences such as King Kong fighting some dinosaurs while tangled in a load of vines and King Kong swatting planes while on top of the Empire State Building. The big problem I have with this film is the pacing because the original is fast, it’s to the point and the focus really is on the creatures and the island but this version is almost twice as long and filled with loads more about the characters. All the detail we get is done well but it feels so needless. Fresh off the “Lord of the Rings” films, I think Jackson was just so used to make very long films that he couldn’t help it. If you want to see everybody’s favourite big screen primate on the loose then you need to see this.