Certificate: 12A

Running Time:  118 mins

Star Rating: 3/5

MANKIND tumbles several links down the food chain in Kong: Skull Island, a rollicking 1970s-set action adventure directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, which revives one of cinema's iconic monsters.

Unfolding predominately on a Pacific island, the picture unleashes a menagerie of hulking beasts as well as the titular ape and contrives a series of digitally rendered showdowns between these leviathans of a lost world.

Kong's briskly edited ding-dongs ping-pong between the spectacular and the dizzying, choreographed to the relentless beat of Henry Jackman's bombastic orchestral score. Director Vogt-Roberts and his three screenwriters are apparently fans of Jurassic Park and its sequels. Key sequences pay homage to Steven Spielberg's dino-blockbuster.

Bill Randa (John Goodman) spearheads a secretive government organisation called Monarch, and leads an exploratory geological survey to a Pacific island. The group includes tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), anti-war photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) and biologist San Lin (Tian Jing).

Crash-landed on the island, the survivors encounter a crazed US airman called Hank Marlow (John C Reilly), who has been living wild for 28 years and 11 months since his aircraft was downed during the Second World War.

Kong: Skull Island angrily flexes its muscles, but punches below its weight. In moments of calm, character development is given disappointingly short shrift and cast including Oscar winner Larson are squandered in bland roles. Hiddleston is unconvincing as a former British soldier, hired to lead the otherworldly expedition.

A brief coda, nestled in the end credits, teases the head-on collision of monster franchises in next year's Godzilla: King Of The Monsters and the full-blown rumble Godzilla Vs Kong in summer 2020.