Monster Hunter is an adaptation of the long-running video game series that started all the way back on the PlayStation 2. I had heard many mixed things about the movie and being barely a casual player of the games, it took me a while to get to this. I have to say the movie is not horrible and in many ways, the movie feels like an action flick that would have come out in the 90s.
How to Download Monster Hunter (2020)
You can download or stream the film from a digital platform. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice. Check out also our review of the game Monster Hunter: World.
The Movie Review
One of the most appealing things about the movie was that it is written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson who did the Resident Evil movies which I actually thought were fun. His wife Mila Jovovich leads a pretty solid cast that includes the likes of Tony Jaa, Ron Pearlman, Diego Luna, and rapper T.I. to name a few.
This is 100 percent an action movie that is held together with a bare-bones plot. That may sound like a negative, but I found this to be more fun than I thought it would be and it is great if you are in the mood for some cool, but mindless action. The setting of the movie is a place called, The New World.
The New World is a kind of savage land with people and monsters trying to coexist and there are people known as Hunters who hunt and kill these dangerous monsters. I have to say that I love the idea of this and from what I remember about the original PlayStation 2 game, it was not exactly story-driven so what they have done here did seem quite fitting to me.
On Earth, we have a team of elite soldiers. This team is led by a badass woman called Artemis while on a mission, they are pulled into a portal and end up in The New World where all of the team is killed, except her. Artemis manages to escape and finds herself face-to-face with a Hunter.
Artemis and this Hunter strike up what at first is an uneasy alliance. The two agree to work together to take down this big monster which will help Artemis get to The Sky Tower so that she can get back to Earth. It is a pretty basic plot, but it works well, and to be fair, it set some stuff up that I would have been interested in seeing pan out if a sequel got made.
What is great about Monster Hunter is the action. As an action movie, this is actually pretty damn awesome! The monsters look really cool and the action scenes are very well done and are quite exciting. People like to talk trash about this movie and I will admit the plot is not that great, but I do not see how anyone can put down the action!
Is Monster Hunter the greatest video game movie adaptation? I would have to say no, but it is also nowhere near as bad as people make out. Granted this is coming from someone with not much knowledge about the lore of the games. However, I can tell you that as an action movie, this is a pretty fun time.
