The makers of this film must enjoy being the big-budget underachievers they are. Paul WS Anderson is perhaps the worst script and story writer working at this level in Hollywood. All his high-concept movies are hilariously bad with zero characterisation or room for longeurs. Their MO is action, action, action until I fart. And in that respect Monster Hunter delivers, when it stops for breath it stinks. There is no plot logic or any real intelligence to any of this, but then I wasn't expecting any, but even for Paul WS Anderson and Milla Jovovich, this is very thin material. They didn't even write Tony Jaa's dialogue, he just mutters in an indecipherable dialect, and all the other people in the film got wiped out quickly (sometimes off-screen) pity Tip Harris, Meagan Good, and Diego Boneta - they have zero to do. Even luckier is Ron Perlman in one of his strangest roles as The Admiral. He looks like an aged version of a power ballad singer, and he really looks like he's would sooner be elsewhere. Monster Hunter is occasionally fun, it's not excruciating, but with a bit more effort this could have been really cool like Pitch Black or Starship Troopers.... I didn't think they made them like this for the cinema anymore!
Hilariously bad in every way.
2 out of 10
This film spends so much time in the desert it runs out If time to have an ending, most the cast are killed quickly so not to give them any lines and the remaining cast get forgotten in the character building department. The palico chef is oddly massive and aggressive rather than cutesy. The admirals look is more monkey than leader warrior. The music is another massive miss, none of the official tunes play out not even the creature signature tunes. All are replaced with a awfully ill fitting score. And after an hour and half the film ends leaving you feeling completely bored and trying to understand why it ends where it does. (In complete)
I'm assuming this is written for nine year olds and presumably by them too! Another video game tie-in movie that is a load of tosh. It has had some money invested in it but the whole thing from clunky, teeth grindingly bad script to the obvious rip-off from Game of Thrones to LOTR via Alien is an example of how money could be better spent. Director Paul W.S. Anderson clearly needing to put his wife into something after the Resident vil franchise petered out so we now have this rubbish. A land of monsters (well three or four) exists alongside the real world and a strange storm generated by a tower (think Mordor and you'll get it) opens up a gateway into which gets sucked Captain Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her team of cocky but super hard Rangers. They all get killed quick enough except the intrepid and gutsy Artemis who teams up with a local warrior (Tony Jaa) but not before they beat each other to a pulp for what seems like three hours. They then fight some monsters....yawn....and head for the strange tower in the distance before bumping into a weird looking Ron Perlman, who must need his swimming pool repaired or something....what was he thinking? So we have a sort of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island meets The Lost World meets Mirkwood with a GoT dragon flying around, and big swords and machine guns. This is awful.