Starring Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando and Kuranosuke Sasaki. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Visual special effects by Takashi Yamazaki and Kiyoko Shibuya.
Budget $15 million dollars. Running time 125 minutes.
As the Second World War draws to an end, failed kamikaze pilot Shikishima (Ryunosuke) returns home in Tokyo suffering from severe survivor's guilt only to find his family home destroyed, his parents dead, and himself suffering from terrible flashbacks to when a juvenile Godzilla attacked his Pacific island airbase and slaughtered every one there, save him and the chief mechanic. But when another survivor of the Tokyo bombing, a woman called Noriko Oishi, whose parents also died in the bombing stumbles into his life, with a newborn orphaned baby, he takes a job onboard a rickety old wooden ex-fishing boat hunting mines in Tokyo harbour to support them.
What follows is simply staggering, and one of the best films I've seen all year. Focusing on the ordinary man and woman in the street and more importantly an ordinary young family and the effects of Godzilla attack first hand, this is an astonishing film with real heart and emotion, much time is spent with the young unmarried couple and their baby as they start to rebuild their lives following the war, while all the time the ever-present ominous spectre of Godzilla looms ever closer. Ryunosuke's guilt ruins any chance he has at building a new life until Godzilla erupts out of the sea and he's given one last chance to fight for his future.
Naturally when it comes to a Godzilla film you come for the action and Minus One does not disappoint, there are five set pieces, which will leave you breathless with tension, including a sea based chase that manages to out 'Jaws' Jaws, if you will as Godzilla chases down an anti-mining ship in the ocean. However it's when Godzilla makes land fall that the action truly unleashes leading to a genuinely extraordinary sequence that left the audience stunned into silence. And later on when silence is used to dramatic effect you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium so invested was the audience.
If your only connection with the Big G is through the Hollywood films of the past nine years and do yourself a favour and go and see this, I predict you've never seen anything like it.
Making this a period piece movie was a stroke of genius, making the struggle against Godzilla all the more dramatic.
There have been 33 Toho studio Godzilla films since 1954 and 37 if you factor in the US efforts and this is simply one of the best, if not the best one yet!
A superb, dramatic and emotional film that actually managed to make me well up with emotion in the final battle. And I simply cannot fault this film. A friend of mine once said, that when a man is tired of watching a man in a monster suit trash scale models of Tokyo he is tired of life and I agree, however in this instance, I came for the destruction and carnage and fell in love with the humanity and the human drama.
Simply one of the best films I've seen all year and I urge you to see it! 10/10
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