Godzilla Minus One ゴジラ-1.0 (2023) Review: A Thrilling Mix of Epic Kaiju Spectacle and Heartfelt Drama
[Update: Godzilla Minus One is now available for streaming on Netflix]
At long last, the frustration of waiting for Godzilla Minus One is over! Outside of Japan, the U.S. and selected countries, this well-received kaiju epic saw Toho choose to skip theatrical release dates in Asia. Not even after the movie made history by winning an Oscar — in this case, Best Visual Effects — earlier this year and it was the first time in 70 years since the 1954 black-and-white original. It wasn’t until the home-media arrival of physical copies and exclusive Prime Video streaming that left-out fans and viewers finally got their chance to see it.
Well, are the overwhelmingly positive reviews surrounding Godzilla Minus One as good as they said? The answer is a big Y-E-S. It was among the greatest Godzilla movies I’ve ever seen with kudos to Takashi Yamazaki’s engrossing mix of thrilling kaiju spectacle and poignant drama.
The movie gets off to an engaging start — the rampage of Godzilla on an outpost in Odo Island during the final days of World War II, resulting in multiple human casualties. Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a disgraced kamikaze pilot who aborts his suicide mission manages to survive the attack.
But his act of cowardice ends up riddling with guilt and upon returning home, he finds his parents all died from the Tokyo bombing. It wasn’t long before he met a homeless young woman named Noriko Oishi (Minami Hamabe). She also carries an orphaned baby, Akiko (Sae Nagatani) where she rescued her and from there, they become a makeshift family.
Shikishima is looking to start a new life as he works hard to take care of Noriko and Akiko. He eventually secures a job as a minesweeper working alongside a crew getting rid of the naval mines in the sea. But just as everything seems to be going fine, Godzilla returns to wreak havoc and the creature is more powerful than ever before.
Yamazaki, who also wrote the screenplay, doesn’t shy away from the horrors of a kaiju monster destroying everything in its path. People are brutally chomped and tossed into the air and in one of the major set pieces, we get to witness Godzilla laying waste the city of Ginza as buildings collapsed and attacked a train. It’s both visually spectacular and frightening. The wild and ferocious nature of Godzilla, which turns increasingly formidable after the subsequent radiation exposure from the U.S. nuclear test, symbolises the post-war trauma and a litmus test for the otherwise battle-weary Japanese to defend themselves.
Beneath the well-choreographed destruction and amazingly seamless CGI, which reportedly cost around US$10-15 million — a tiny fraction from the usual hundreds of millions typically utilised in effects-heavy Hollywood blockbusters, Yamazaki also successfully delves deeper into the survivor’s guilt coming from Shikishima. We first see him as a coward and a loser but his chance for redemption arrives in the form of two strangers: Noriko and Akiko. He takes care of them like a family but the underlying guilt that’s been burdening him all this while remains intact.
His trauma — the seemingly unstoppable Godzilla — keeps haunting him and eating him inside out. His past failures soon become his motivation and ultimately leading to the best scene in Godzilla Minus One — the riveting third act, complete with the Jaws-like tactical moment as Shikishima and participating crew involved in an elaborate plan to trap and bring down the Godzilla once and for all.
Godzilla Minus One also benefits from Naoki Sato’s perfectly rousing score, where he brilliantly incorporated the late legendary Akira Ifukube’s Godzilla theme. The overall acting is top-notch, making me care about some of the characters going through the ordeal. The production values on the post-war 1940s setting of Japan alongside Kozo Shibasaki’s atmospheric cinematography deserve equal mention.
