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The giant monster returns to Japan in the offbeat ‘Shin Godzilla’

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As the monster takes its more familiar shape, it looks more dangerous and evil.

Three stars

Shin Godzilla Hiroki Hasegawa, Satomi Ishihara, Yutaka Takenouchi. Directed by Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi. Not rated. Opens Tuesday in select theaters.

After the success of the 2014 Hollywood studio version of Godzilla (with a sequel on the way), it’s not surprising that Japanese studio Toho, which originated the long-running giant-monster character, would want to get back in on the action. Toho’s new reboot Shin Godzilla, the studio’s first Godzilla movie since 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars, is a bit of an unexpected turn for the franchise, focused more on the fairly realistic depiction of the governmental response to a giant monster attack than on the monster attack itself.

Although it opens with Godzilla (in a sort of proto-monster form) emerging from the sea and careening through Tokyo, the movie spends more time in conference rooms and bunkers than on the streets where the monster is wreaking havoc. Writer and co-director Hideaki Anno (best known as the creator of the influential anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion) introduces dozens of characters at a dizzying pace, all identified by onscreen text with their name and governmental position. As the Japanese government scrambles to respond to this new threat, various officials jockey for position, and red tape gets in the way of the most efficient solutions, sometimes in dryly humorous ways.

Eventually, though, a few pragmatic, level-headed problem-solvers emerge, including Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa), a lower-ranking bureaucrat whose early perception of the monster’s threat puts him at the head of the response task force; and Kayoko Ann Patterson (Satomi Ishihara), a Japanese-American envoy from the U.S., who’s willing to sacrifice her political ambitions in her home country in order to do what’s best for Japan. The complex relationship between Japan and the U.S. is one of the movie’s major themes, with the Japanese government working to maintain autonomy as the threat of Godzilla grows larger and larger. The movie becomes a surprisingly melancholy meditation on national character even as it ultimately provides patriotic uplift when the country comes together to defeat the threat.

And what about the monster? The special effects, of course, are not on par with the 2014 Hollywood version, and at times (especially when the monster is in its earliest form), Godzilla looks extremely goofy and unthreatening. But Anno adds in the idea of Godzilla evolving rapidly, and as the monster takes its more familiar shape, it looks more dangerous and evil (eventually it shoots frickin’ laser beams). The effects (a combination of CGI, motion capture and miniatures) are never spectacular, but by keeping the action scenes to a minimum, Anno and co-director Shinji Higuchi (a veteran special effects artist) make the best use of their limited resources.

Godzilla fans eager for nonstop monster mayhem may be disappointed by the focus on bureaucracy, and the lightning-fast barrage of characters and meetings can be a bit tough to follow, especially in the movie’s first half. But Anno succeeds in offering a new perspective on the decades-old franchise, without losing sight of what has made Godzilla endure for so many years. He gives Toho a worthy counterpart to Hollywood’s monster-sized production.

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