After bidding farewell to the Resident Evil franchise, director Paul W.S. Anderson and his wife/muse Milla Jovovich hopped aboard another video game movie. Now, Monster Hunter is a video game I had never heard of, let alone played, so I can’t say how faithful it is to the source material. All I know is it’s a big comedown from the Resident Evil flicks.
Milla plays an Army Ranger whose team enters a mysterious sandstorm and wind up in another dimension where they do battle with monsters who burrow through the desert like Bugs Bunny on his way to Pismo Beach. Eventually she comes in contact with Tony Jaa, another lost/temporally displaced traveler in the desert. After gaining each other’s trust, they band together to fight the monsters in hopes of finding a way back home.
I love it when a movie shows me something I’ve never seen before. Monster Hunter gives us the delirious sight of a bleach blonde Ron Perlman piloting a pirate ship across dry land. Not a bad way to start a movie if you ask me. We also get a cat man pirate who is criminally underutilized.
Unfortunately, things become frustratingly generic after the fun opening as the desert battle scenes are kind of a bust, and the escape from the creatures’ hive sequence feels like leftovers from an Alien sequel. It also doesn’t help that the monsters themselves don’t have much personality as they resemble giant ticks and/or the offspring of a dragon and the sandworm from Tremors.
Also, the fights between Jaa and Jovovich, two of my favorite action stars working today, are strangely lackluster. They’re overedited, underchoreographed, and underwhelming. The climax is likewise tepid as the whole thing boils down to them fighting a dragon. The gratuitous set-up for a sequel doesn’t help matters either. I will say it’s never boring, and the sight of Jovovich and Jaa together is fun, even if Anderson doesn’t quite make the most of their talents.
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