Starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rauebrt Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Ed Skrein, Bechir Sulvain and Philippine Velge

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Universal, in cinemas now

It’s been three decades since the dinosaurs returned and they’re dying out both in reality and the public eye. Most survive in a tropical band of land that’s a functional exclusion zone for humans. In that zone, the island Ile Saint-Hubert is home to the dinosaurs deemed too dangerous, or too unwieldy, for Jurassic Park or Jurassic World. Three of those dinosaurs hold the key to a life changing heart medication. Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), a pharmaceutical executive, recruits Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and Doctor Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to retrieve them. On the way they pick up a distress signal from the Delgado family yacht. Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and family were attacked by dinosaurs and Krebs doesn’t want any witnesses…

The best Jurassic movie in a long time sounds a little like damning with faint praise. Because, honestly, it’s damning with faint praise. While the Jurassic World franchise was uneven but finished well, this pseudo-reboot is streamlined, focused and surprisingly character driven.

Johansson is great, and it’s so refreshing to have a movie in this series fronted by a woman. She’s also trying something new here which connects directly to her work in her last couple of Black Widow movies. Zora is cheery, precise, funny and more than a little frightening. She’s got a very masculine action hero energy which makes all her interactions with other characters pop in some fun, different ways. Ali too is having fun as her transport coordinator and ship captain. Duncan is much gregarious than the men Ali traditionally plays and he and Johansson find some interesting common ground as soldiers with parallel trauma. Friend is good too, if given very little surprising, as Krebs.

But the standouts here are surprising. Bailey is flat out brilliant as Henry Loomis, balancing discomfort and lack of confidence with total love for dinosaurs. He’s the conscience of the movie and has its best moment, moved to tears by a serene herd of skyscraper sized Titanosaurs. The other standouts are the exact characters you’d expect to drag the movie down. Garcia-Rulfo is great as Reuben, a good natured and determined patriarch who learns in extremis but it’s David Iacono who is really surprising. As Teresa Delgado (Luna Blaise)’s boyfriend he starts off deeply annoying and turns into a surprisingly nuanced, likable character. Blaise and Audrina Miranda as her younger sister are great too and the movie’s parallel groups of survivors are both big fun to spend time with.

But, of course, you’re here for the dinosaurs and this movie does not in any way disappoint. The core ‘heist’ idea is great, and extracting blood from the three enormous dinosaur species required gives the movie three memorably nasty, fun action scenes. I especially loved the Quetzalcoatlus mission which involves an ancient tomb, an angry pterosaur the size of an F16 and a very, very long drop. Other standouts include a brilliantly handled T-Rex chase with the best jump scare the series has had in years as an opening. The D-Rex, the hybrid T-Rex at the core of the movie is fun too, a Cloverfield-esque horror show of grotesque precision and malice.

All of this is fun but there’s a nagging sense of the movie trying a little too hard. Zora’s trauma is sprinted past; Krebs is an off the peg corporate villain and the movie raises a lot of ideas but never quite commits to a lot of them. There’s also a couple of moments, which are going to be different for a lot of people, where your suspension of disbelief will be stretched to breaking point. Part of that is a problem for the franchise with yet another lost island evoking the journeys to Site B in earlier movies. The other, a series of drainage ducts conveniently large enough for dinosaurs to rampage through, is entirely on this movie. Also there’s a well-publicised change to a character’s fate which is deeply awkward and clunky.

Verdict: That being said, this really is the best Jurassic movie in years. The cast are fun, the action’s nicely chunky and inventive and it looks at some big issues. It may not do so in depth but it’s a good start. or perhaps, a good rebirth. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart