Minus Nothing

After the latest American kaiju offering, we were psyched for Godzilla Minus One (2023). It's a Japanese mid-budget movie with a lot of buzz. It was hard to get to see for a while in the US, presumably to give the domestic product a chance.

It starts during WWII. A kamikaze plane makes an emergency landing on a Pacific island. Munetaka Aoki, the head mechanic, figures that the pilot, Ryunosuke Kamiki, is faking a mechanical issue to get out of his mission. He tacitly approves. But when a giant lizard attacks the island, Kamiki has a chance to use his plane's machine on the monster, but freezes. When the fight is over, only Kamiki and Aoki are still alive, and Aoki blames Kamiki.

When the war is over, Kamiki goes home to Tokyo. He finds only rubble where is old house was. His parents are dead. A woman who was his neighbor gives him the news, then remembers he was supposed to be a kamikaze pilot. Now she blames him for not doing his duty and dying in battle to protect Japan. 

He runs into a young woman, Minami Hanabe, with a baby. He tries to get rid of them, but she follows him back to his spot in the ruins, and refuses to leave. She knows he can't leave them to die. The hostile neighbor eventually comes by to show them how to take care of the baby, both scornfully and tenderly. 

He gets a job clearing mines from the harbor. It pays well because of the danger. His crewmates include naval scientist and a man too young to have fought in the war. When he says he wished it lasted longer so that he could have fought, Kamiki sees red. But when Godzilla shows up again, now much bigger and with atomic heat breath, they are going to have to help take him down.

The first part of the movie is almost a simple Japanese post-war drama, with the Godzilla attack as just one other terrible thing along with the war, the fire-bombing of Tokyo and everything. Kamiki suffers from PTSD and survivor's guilt. Although people keep telling him to come back alive, when he does he is ashamed. He wants to help Hanabe and the baby, although he isn't in love with Hanabe, and the baby isn't his, or even hers. He's mostly good at his job, but gets very twitchy when faced with danger. 

The last part is almost all a modern action movie attack on Godzilla. Here, Godzilla is a horrifying force of nature, earthquake and volcano combined. But our scientist has a plan to stop him. Kamiki will fly a prototype jet fighter to distract or lure the monster. He even gets the mechanic Aoki to help - and so he can partially atone. He doesn't tell the scientist, but they plan for him to kamikaze into Godzilla if nothing else works. 

And I'll put in a SPOILER. Japan has finally gotten around to building ejector seats into their planes. He does come back alive.

The combination of a sensitive post-war drama and action monster movie is really incongruous. Post-war Tokyo is filmed really well, and so are the monster scenes, especially at sea. There's a black-and-white version, and we really want to see that too.