FILM OF THE WEEK

Kong: Skull Island (Cert 12, 118 mins, Warner Home Video, Action/Adventure/Fantasy/Romance, available from July 3 on Amazon Video/BT TV Store/iTunes/Sky Store/TalkTalk TV Store and other download and streaming services, available from July 24 on DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £26.99/3D Blu-ray £29.99/4K Ultra HD Blu-ray £34.99)

Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, Corey Hawkins, Tian Jing.

Bill Randa (John Goodman) spearheads a secretive government organisation called Monarch, which specialises "in the hunt for massive unidentified terrestrial organisms".

He leads an exploratory geological survey to a Pacific island, which is encircled by an electrical storm, and sequesters Preston Packard (Samuel L Jackson) from Da Nang airbase to fly the mission.

Packard corrals his best pilots and loads aircraft with sonic bombs to map the island's topography.

Passengers include tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), anti-war photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson), geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) and biologist San Lin (Tian Jing).

The team's sonic weapons rouse a giant ape and the best-laid plans of men of science are smashed to smithereens.

Kong: Skull Island is a rollicking 1970s-set action adventure directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, which angrily flexes its muscles, but punches below its weight.

In moments of calm, character development is given disappointingly short shrift and the cast including Oscar winner Larson are squandered in bland roles.

Hiddleston is unconvincing as a former British soldier, hired to lead the otherworldly expedition, and his swaggering hunk's centrepiece action sequence involving a samurai sword and gas mask is superfluous and almost laughable in its execution.

Director Vogt-Roberts and his three screenwriters repeatedly reference Jurassic Park and its sequels as they contrive a series of digitally rendered showdowns between leviathans of a lost world.

These briskly edited skirmishes are both spectacular and dizzying, choreographed to the relentless beat of Henry Jackman's bombastic orchestral score.

Rating: ***