Movie Review: Pacific Rim
What We Liked
What We Didn't Like
Ever since I was a kid, I have loved Japanese monster films. They played a big role in developing my love of cinema, and I consider the original Godzilla (1954) one of the finest examples of allegorical science-fiction in film history. And for almost a decade now, I’ve loved the films of Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker who previously brought us Cronos (1993), Mimic (1997), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). Ever since I first heard about Pacific Rim, a sci-fi epic about giant robots fighting giant monsters, co-written by directed by del Toro, I have been chomping at the bit to see it. Now the film is finally here, and it is as awesome as I had hoped. Pacific Rim is the best action movie I’ve seen all year, and is not to be missed under any circumstances.
In the near future, giant monsters known as “Kaiju” begin to rise from a dimensional portal located in a crevasse beneath the Pacific Ocean, beginning a war which claims millions of lives and quickly consumes humanity’s resources for years on end. To combat the monstrous beasts, a special type of weapon is designed: massive robots known as Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge, a process known as “drifting.” For a time, the Jaegers allow the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, led by Marshal Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), to successfully beat back the monsters and protect humanity. But as the war rages on, even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless against the increasingly-relentless Kaiju. On the verge of defeat, the PPDC have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes – washed-up former pilot Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and untested trainee Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) – who are teamed to drive Gipsy Danger, a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the early days of the war. Together, they must stand as mankind’s last hope against the mounting apocalypse.
The cast is an interesting and diverse mix, and while the characters aren’t given tons of depth or back-story, the actors do a lot with what they’re given. Hunnam does solid work as our hero, former Jaeger pilot Raleigh Becket. It combines the standard tropes of the warrior who suffered a great loss finding a reason to fight again and the talented-but-rebellious guy learning to shape up and better himself, but Hunnam acquits himself well in it. Kikuchi, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Babel (2006), plays Mako Mori, a survivor of a Kaiju attack who becomes Raleigh’s new co-pilot. Mako’s personal journey is one of the parts of the human storyline, Kikuchi does a good job with it, and I’m glad that the female lead here actually has an important role to play in the story. Also, I thought it was a refreshing surprise that the film didn’t try to shoehorn in a romantic subplot between Raleigh and Mako; while there are hints that something could happen in the future, they remain platonic friends during the events of the story.
My favorite character was Idris Elba as Marshal Stacker Pentecost, the leader of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Elba is an amazing actor, managing to come across as incredibly badass without having to even raise his voice, and his rallying-the-troops speech is one of the best-written scenes in the film. Charlie Day, best known from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Horrible Bosses (2011), gets some great moments as Dr. Netwon Geizler, a fast-talking, arrogant scientist with the demeanor of a celebrity chef; while the character is mostly here for comic relief, he gets some solid dramatic beats as well. He is complemented by Burn Gorman as Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, a phlegmatic, tweed-wearing Englishman who has some great scenes opposite Geizler. The one who almost ends up stealing the show is Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chau, a black marketeer who makes his living selling Kaiju organs. Perlman previously worked with Guillermo del Toro on Cronos, Blade II, and the Hellboy films, and his character here is so much fun to watch. Robert Kazinsky as Austrailian Jaeger pilot Chuck Hansen, is basically playing the Iceman to Raleigh’s Maverick, but makes the character come across as more than just the jerk ace pilot. Max Martini also has some good scenes as Hercules “Herc” Hansen, Chuck’s father and co-pilot, as well as perhaps the only real friend that Pentecost has. Clifton Collins Jr. gets some great moments as Tendo Choi, the chief Jaeger technician. Heather Doerksen and Robert Maillet look really cool as, respectively, Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky, the pilots of the Russian Jaeger Cherno Alpha, and I wish they’d gotten more to do. The same is true of Charles, Lance, and Mark Luu as the Wei Tang Triplets, who operate the Chinese robot Crimson Typhoon. And Spanish actor Santiago Segura, another del Toro regular, shows up briefly as a black-market trader who works for Hannibal Chau.
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But the true driving force behind the film, and probably the biggest contributing factor to why it works so well, is writer/director Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro is one of the most talented and interesting genre filmmakers working today, and whenever I hear about a new project he’s connected to, I always pay attention. The director has talked about how much he loves Japanese kaiju films and robot anime, and his passion for the project comes through loud and clear. While Pacific Rim is certainly a new arena of filmmaking for del Toro, his trademark stylistic touches are very much in play. His signature attention to detail is front and center in the designs of both the Jaegers and the Kaiju, and he celebrates them with long, sweeping shots which display his creations in all their glory. Along with his longtime cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and his editors Peter Amundson and John Gilroy, del Toro does a great job of keeping the action clear for the audience, maintaining a coherent geography and not resorting to techniques like shaky-cam or rapid-fire cutting.
But what will be the big draw of Pacific Rim for most people is the visual effects and action, which are truly amazing. Basically, the film takes the kind of cool imagery we’ve seen in the Japanese monster films, and does it on a Hollywood budget with cutting-edge visual effects. The scenes of the Kaiju attacking cities are straight out of the old Godzilla movies, but with a scale and intensity equal to any modern blockbuster. Because the Jaegers and Kaiju are portrayed via CGI, rather than by men in creature suits like the old Japanese films, they can move in a more dynamic, fluid way than was ever possible before. I loved the money shot of Gipsy Danger wielding a huge container ship like a baseball bat and clobbering a Kaiju with it in the trailers, and it’s even better on the big screen. And for anyone who’s worried that the trailers have given away too much, fear not, because there’s plenty that you haven’t seen yet. But I think the thing that impressed me the most about the effects was the amazing sense of scale they created. There was not a single moment they were onscreen that I did not believe that the Kaiju and the Jaegers were absolutely massive. When I was a kid and I made my Godzilla toys and my Transformers fight each other, the battles in Pacific Rim are the kind of things I was imagining.
A scene from “Pacific Rim.” Photo by Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures – © 2013 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Funding, LLC.
I want to talk a bit about the film’s tone, which I think might surprise some people. Del Toro has said that he intended Pacific Rim to have a light feeling and tone, in contrast to the many brooding, dark, cynical summer movies we’ve had in recent years, and I think he definitely succeeded. For example, the film makes a point of showing and mentioning that cities are being evacuated and people are getting to shelter before the Kaiju make landfall, so we the audience can enjoy the visceral thrill of robots and monsters fighting in a city without having to think about innocent people getting killed. In a summer where movies like Man of Steel and The Lone Ranger have been criticized for taking traditionally kid-oriented properties and making them too dark and gruesome for younger audiences, Pacific Rim is actually more family-friendly than the trailers have let on. The violence in the film is almost entirely between the Kaiju and Jaegers, rather than against humans. And while it’s probably too intense for really young kids, older children will probably get a kick out of seeing the movie. Del Toro said that while the visuals and action will satisfy an adult audience, his real hope is that Pacific Rim will introduce the kaiju and mecha genres to a generation of children, and I hope that parents will take their children to see it.
I was lucky enough to see Pacific Rim in IMAX 3D, and it really did add to the experience. For a long time, I thought the huge image size of the IMAX format would work really well for giant monster films, and I’m happy to say that I was right. I was a little wary about the 3D, but it turns out I needn’t have worried. Del Toro is very smart with how he employs 3D, using it to increase the feeling of distance and depth in shots of cities and the interior of the enormous Shatterdome where the Jaegers are housed, and never once resorts to the cheap trick of throwing objects at the camera. And seeing the film this way also helped add to the sense of scale, creating a real feeling of these massive robots and monsters looming over me. Of course, the film will still be great without IMAX and 3D, but if you have the opportunity to see it with these additions, you should definitely take it.
Idris Elba in “Pacific Rim.” Photo by Kerry Hayes – © 2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Legendary Pictures Funding, LLC.
But as much as I loved the film, I freely admit that it has its flaws. First off, the characters are pretty thinly-written for the most part. For most of them, I was able to correctly guess what their overall arcs would be, but I was still able to enjoy seeing their stories play out. I also wished some of the characters, like the Kaidanovskys and the Wei Tang Triplets, had gotten more screen time. It was disappointing that there were no prominent female characters other than Mako Mori; while Sasha Kaidanovsky may be cool, she barely gets anything to do. For a film where the key theme is humanity putting aside its differences in the face of an overwhelming threat, the Pan Pacific Defense Corps still seems like a bit of a boys club. Some of the lines in the film are also really corny and on-the-nose, and while I was able to roll with that, I can see it taking some people out of the film. Also, I have to say I was kind of let down that only four of the Jaegers – Gipsy Danger, Striker Eureka, Crimson Typhoon, and Cherno Alpha – are actually featured prominently, with all others getting at most brief glimpses. This was especially surprising in the case of the Japanese robot Coyote Tango, which even got its own poster, but as far as I can tell, doesn’t show up in the movie at all. And without getting into spoilers, there is a point about midway through the film where I thought the Kaiju were able to overwhelm the human forces a little too easily. I’m sure the intent was to emphasize that the Kaiju were getting stronger and smarter, but I thought it made the humans seem kind of like chumps. In a lot of ways, the film reminds me of Independence Day (1996), which is a movie I know a lot of people like to rag on, but I unabashedly love. Yes, Pacific Rim is cheesy, but it’s so fun and exuberant that you get totally swept up in it.
I had been anticipating Pacific Rim for so long, and I had been so excited about it, that I was worried I was over-hyping it in my mind to a degree the film could never live up to. But when I walked out of the theater after it was over, I was almost ecstatic from how much I enjoyed it. While the film certainly isn’t perfect, it did deliver on what I hoped to get from a Japanese-inspired sci-fi action epic from Guillermo del Toro. Watching Pacific Rim was the most pure fun I’ve had at the movies since The Avengers. This is exactly what I want from a summer movie – action-packed, fun, and ridiculously entertaining. I loved Pacific Rim, and I can’t wait to see it again.
P.S. When you go see the movie, be sure that you stay through the first part of the end credits.
Timothy Monforton
