Monster Hunter is a thrilling action-packed survival film that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
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Director, writer and producer Paul W.S. Anderson brings another video game franchise to the big screen with his muse and wife, Milla Jovovich.
Monster Hunter opens in the ‘New World’ with a pirate ship riding waves of sand, seemingly escaping a giant worm-like monster. It’s a dark mess but we’re shown a glimpse of a hairy blonde Ron Perlman steering the ship as one of his men falls overboard.
Back in the regular old world we’re all familiar with, Jovovich’s U.S. Army Ranger Captain Natalie Artemis rides through the desert with her military team - a fun clan of loyal and brave characters whose names you’ll barely get the chance to remember before they’re never seen again - played by T.I., Meagan Good, Diego Boneta and MC Jin. The team encounters an unnatural storm that transports them to the New World.
It is here in this sandy desert that the non-stop survival action begins (and your breathing stops, probably) when a huge sand monster - the Black Diablos - attacks and seemingly never gets hurt from all the military fire power aimed at it. The team only manages to shake it off when they reach a rocky cave and are out of the sand but unbeknownst to them, there are monsters in there too.
Captain Artemis is left to fend for herself when the bug-like monsters attack her whole team. Fortunately for her, a Lone Ranger/Monster Hunter (a criminally underutilised Tony Jaa) saves her skin and takes her in. Artemis concludes that she needs to walk back into the storm in order to return to her world and even though they don’t speak the same language, the two seemingly understand each other enough to survive.
The non-stop action we see throughout the movie is clearly compensating for the lack of communication between the two main leads, if not for a lack of storyline. Don’t get me wrong, the action sequences are thrilling - as is the the accompanying score - and will keep you on the edge of your seat at times but strip that away and Monster Hunter is just a shell of a movie that needed no adaptation.
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