The myth of Gojira or Godzilla is revived again in this watchable entertainment: the gigantic Japanese sea monster rises once more from the deep to terrify humanity and destroy whole cities.

Haruo Nakajima, actor who played the original Godzilla, dies aged 88 Read more

In the original 1954 movie, it was awakened from its sleep by America’s nuclear testing in the Pacific: a symbolically transformed vision of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a complex, ambiguous expression of Japan’s own potential for rage – and retribution. In this movie, its rebirth is caused by the dumping of nuclear waste. There are lots of very shrewd and amusing scenes showing Japan’s bickering and sclerotic bureaucracy.

While the monster destroys buildings, different government committees argue endlessly among themselves about what it is to be done. I have to admit that the very first vision of the monster is (perhaps inevitably) a bit bathetic: it’s a little Ray Harryhausen, although there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. And the need for an American dimension brings in one slightly absurd character: a senator’s daughter from the US with a Japanese-American background (played by Satomi Ishihara) is a woman who bafflingly speaks English only with a strong and borderline unintelligible accent and comports herself with torpid model languor at all times.

In the end, the country that promises to save Japan is not the US but France, being a “nuclear” nation. French audiences may not know quite how to react to this compliment.