YOU’RE Peter Jackson. Your previous movie, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, scooped 11 Oscars. Your international box office tally is up there somewhere round the $3 billion mark.

So what do you do next? A low-budget ghost story? A Rings spin-off? No, you plough more than $200 million , including a hefty chunk of your own fortune, into a three-hour remake of a camp 1933 classic with B-list actors, a bucket-load of computer effects, and a giant gorilla. That Jackson’s King Kong upgrades the now hammy original with wit, heart and humour is a pleasant surprise. That it does so by reinventing the action blockbuster, in form and emotional impact, is nothing less than an act of cinematic alchemy.

The opening sequence sets the tone — a montage of Depression New York that skips from impeccably realised CG cityscapes to portraits of the homeless and the dispossessed. It’s here that we find our heroine, the actress-waif Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts).

Darrow is doomed. “Every time you reach out for something you care about,” observes an acquaintance, “fate comes along and snatches it away.” She joins the Pacific Ocean expedition of adventure movie director Carl Denham (Jack Black) because of an interest in the work of playwright and fellow passenger Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody).

Driscoll, Denham and the rest of the voyagers on board the SS Venture (destination: Skull Island) are drawn with equally quirky brush-strokes. The narrative pacing, especially in these early scenes, seems leisurely — 55 minutes elapse before we catch a glimpse of the island. For a three-hour movie this could seem like padding, yet these scenes are simply a measured intake of air before one of the greatest dizzying sprints in cinema history.

Once we hit Skull Island everything changes. Jackson picks up his own movie and spins it wildly into a visceral frenzy of hyperkinetic action — one that simply refuses to stop. There are killer zombies, gunfights, random executions, and human sacrifices aplenty.

Then Kong appears, snatches Darrow, and he’s gone. Brontosauri stampede, then raptors attack, then giant insects, then giant slugs. And still Jackson refuses to pause, even for a second. Some of the scenes are grisly and dark, but they’re gone in a flash. Some of the effects are slightly ropey, but you don’t care. There are more dinosaurs. Three T. Rexes versus Kong, with Darrow in the middle. Then giant bats, then more guns, and more chasing, all the way back to New York, to the Empire State Building and to a morbid appointment with destiny.

Of course, the real star here is Kong. This Kong is a breathtaking testament to the power of cutting edge hyper-realism. Yet the real genius here is not in the realisation of Kong’s loping walk or expressive features but in his simple scripted character. Like Darrow, he is an outsider in his own environment.

What Kong craves from Darrow is not a chance to see her naked, but simple human companionship. So the queasy racial and sexual subtext (Kong as the libidinous native) that plagues the original and all subsequent Kong tales is eradicated. What we are left with is an outstanding film imbued with childlike wonder, both at the mysteries of human intimacy and at the seemingly limitless possibilities of the medium.

King Kong is due in British cinemas on December 15

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010