I’ve often heard some movies be described as “so
awesome your head might explode.” I never really understood what they were
talking about until I went to the theater to see Pacific Rim. Like so many
summer movies before it, Pacific Rim
uses style over substance, but unlike many summer movies from before it has
style in spades. It would be easy for
people to write this off as another Transformers
rip-off (I’m talking to you Battleship)
but Michael Bay will never make anything close to this. Guillermo Del Toro has had a lengthy absence
from the directors’ chair (his last movie was Hellboy II) but the wait was well worth it.
In the near future, coastal cities come under attack by
giant alien monsters called Kaijus, who appear out of an inter-dimensional
portal in the Pacific Ocean. To fight
the Kaiju, the humans build massive robots called Jaegers, which are each
controlled by two pilots since the mental load quickly proves too much for
anybody to control the Jaegers alone.
While the Jaegers appear to be winning at first, Kaiju attacks become
more frequent and dangerous. Eventually,
the Jaegers are being destroyed faster than they can be built and the
government decides to disband the project in a few months in favor of building
gigantic walls along the coasts (which goes about as well as you might expect).
The leader of the Jaeger program Stacker
Pentecost (Idris Elba) decides to use the four remaining Jaegers to make a last
stand against the Kaijus. To help with
his plans, he recruits former Jaeger pilot Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam),
who is still recovering emotionally after the loss of his brother/co-pilot in
combat. He is partnered with rookie
pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) who also happens to be Pentecost’s adopted
daughter with her own traumatizing history with the Kaiju. Meanwhile, research scientist Dr. Newton Gieszler
(Charlie Day) is studying the Kaiju brain in the hopes of finding a way to
establish a mental link with them with the reluctant help of Dr. Hermann Gottlieb
(Burn Gorman).
But enough with the plot,
let’s talk about the action. The fight
scenes between the Jaegers and the Kaiju are nothing short of spectacular. They gave me an at-the-edge-of-my-seat
feeling they I don’t think I’ve had in years.
Every time I watched a fight I was in a state of what I can now only
describe as incredulous glee. The visual
effects are also unbelievable and just like with last year’s Life of Pi, if this movie doesn’t walk
away with a Best Visual Effects Oscar for their efforts I will lose my faith in
the Academy.
The only real problem with Pacific Rim is that the human characters aren’t very interesting. Their development mostly ranges from mediocre
to clichéd. One person in particular who
stuck out like a sore thumb was Ron Perlman.
Here he plays a black market trafficker of Kaiju parts named Hannibal
Chau (I dare you not to laugh at that name).
His sole purpose in this is to provide useless exposition and apparently
be a glorified cameo for Del Toro (kind of like how Bruce Campbell always gets
shoehorned into Sam Raimi’s movies).
While
Pacific Rim has some problems with
the script but I loved the special effects and fight scenes so much that I was
more than willing to let that go. As a
matter of fact Pacific Rim is
probably been my favorite movie so far this year (though I expect that will
change soon enough with award season kicking in soon). I’ve got my fingers crossed for a
sequel.
Grade: A-
Next Review: Turbo
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