Japanese film “Godzilla Minus One”, which was belatedly released on Netflix a few days ago in South Korea, is one of the better Godzilla flicks I saw during last 30 years. While you surely get as much as you can expect whenever the titular character enters the screen, the movie also shows some care to a number of human characters in the story, and that certainly distinguishes itself from several recent Godzilla movies from Hollywood.

You do not need to see other Japanese Godzilla films first, because, as reflected by its very title, the movie is a reboot which takes the series back to the late 1940s. During the opening scene, we are introduced to a kamikaze pilot named Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), and then we see his first encounter with Godzilla, which occurs not long after he lands on the Japanese military base located in some small island. It is apparent to the lead mechanic of the base from the beginning that Kōichi is fleeing from his deadly duty, but that becomes a rather trivial matter once Godzilla appears and then attacks the base, and this certainly traumatizes Kōichi.

Anyway, he eventually returns to Japan along with many other soldiers once the World War II is over, and he is all the more devastated to see that all of his family members in Tokyo were dead due to the air raids on Tokyo. As Kōichi tries to rebuild his life, he happens to get associated with a young woman named Noriko (Minami Hamabe), and Noriko comes to live along with him and a little orphan baby girl she happened to acquire not long before she met him.

While Tokyo and its citizens subsequently go through a recovery period during next several months, things gradually get better for Kōichi and others around him. He gets a rather risky job which can provide enough money to support not only him but also Noriko and the baby, but Noriko is also willing to work for getting more money for them, and a neighbor of theirs, who happened to lose all of her children during the war, is ready to take care of the baby in the meantime.

The movie slowly establishes the imminent danger to be unleashed upon Tokyo and its citizens. Once Godzilla gets enlarged and empowered by the latest hydrogen bomb test by the US military, it is promptly going toward Tokyo, but both the US military and the Japanese government are not so willing to take any big action against this impending disaster for a complicated political reason.

Needless to say, Kōichi, whose job is incidentally removing numerous military underwater mines, and his several colleagues soon behold how unstoppable Godzilla really is, and that surely throws him into another panic. As Godzilla makes its expected appearance, the movie does a nice variation of the certain scene of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975), and you will surely be reminded of that memorable line from when Roy Scheider’s character confronts that big white shark for the first time in that film.

Once Godzilla arrives in Tokyo, the movie certainly goes for more shock and awe for us. As it stomps here and there around one area of Tokyo, we are served with a series of spectacular moments to admire. In this film, Godzilla is a wrathful force of nature which attacks upon the city and its people with no mercy at all, and you will be chilled and then entertained when Akira Ifukube’s famous theme from those classic Godzilla flicks is boldly played on the soundtrack in the middle of this sequence.

The second part of the film mainly revolves around Kōichi and many other human characters’ attempt to stop Godzilla by any means necessary. One of his colleagues, who happens to be a former Naval weapons engineer, turns out to have a plan, and, though they are not so sure about whether it will eventually succeed or not, they decide to go all the way for saving people from more possible disasters to come via Godzilla.

It goes without saying that Kōichi becomes a key figure in this highly perilous mission, and his personal drama comes to function as a human element to hold our attention during the eventual climactic part. While Godzilla is still the main star of the film, Ryunosuke Kamiki holds his own place well even when his character is overwhelmed by Godzilla, and several other main cast members including Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Sōsaku Tachibana, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Kuranosuke Sasaki, and Sakura Ando, whom you may remember for her poignant performance in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “The Shoplifters” (2018), are also well-cast in their colorful archetype supporting roles.

In conclusion, “Godzilla Minus One” is a solid piece of entertainment which is more enjoyable than those recent Hollywood Godzilla films, and director/writer Takashi Yamazaki, who deservedly received a Best Visual Effects Oscar early in this year, did a competent job of bringing some new and fresh energy into its longtime franchise. Considering what is shown around the end of the film, there will certainly be more Godzilla films to come (Godzilla is as hard to kill as Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, you know), and I am ready for them after throwing more of my inconsequential snobbism on many of Godzilla flicks. They may be really trashes, but please remember what late critic Pauline Kael once said: “The movies are so rarely great art, that if we can’t appreciate great trash, there is little reason for us to go.”