Pacific Rim – Movie Review
Pacific Rim – Movie Review
Director: Guilermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Travis Beacham (screenplay & story)
Stars: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman, Diego Klattenhoff, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Max Martini, Robert Kazinsky, Clifton Collins Jr.
Sci-Fi / Action-Adventure
From the moment I heard about Pacific Rim, I loved the concept: giant monsters invade us from under the sea and we build giant robots to fight them. The more details I got, the more excited I became. It didn’t disappoint.
When I looked back at Pacific Rim later, there were some problems. Heck, there were some problems while I was in the theater watching it. But I was so caught up in the scope of it, the heart-pounding excitement, the can-do attitude of the characters, that the problems didn’t matter. Accept that it isn’t perfect, and go see it anyway. You’ll be glad you did.
Earth has been invaded by Kaiju–giant Love craftian beasts coming through a dimensional rift that opened deep under the sea. Over time we developed Jaegers, skyscraper-tall robots (mecha), piloted by a team of two working in tandem.
Although every Kaiju that turns up is different, we’ve classified them into various categories, and studied them. We’ve developed bigger and better Jaegers to fight them. But building the Jaegers takes time and money, the Kaiju have left the world short on both, and there are some who think a better use of resources would be to just build giant walls to hide behind and hope no one breaks through. Standard run and hide scenario.
Those who fight are continuing to fight, and the scientists (both of them!) are continuing to look for a permanent solution to the problem.
The fight scenes were a bit too choppy–I really wanted to see the robots and the monsters, but I couldn’t see either clearly, and it was hard to follow what was going on during quick action. There were some interesting robot fighting techniques discussed that we didn’t see nearly enough of. Once we got to know some of the Jaegar teams, I wanted to see them fight more than we did.
The movie started out by “setting the scene”–giving a rundown on how things had started and progressed for seven year. Then some stuff happened for a little while. Then we got another five year jump. Some more stuff happened. Then the movie really got started. I understand why it was done the way it was, but it added to the overall uneven feel to the movie.
Performance wise, Ron Perlman plays a very successful black market dealer, Hannibal Chau, and he steals every single scene he is a part of. Completely. Go see it just for his performance. Other standouts are Charlie Hunnam as a Jaegar pilot dealing with an unspeakable loss, Rinko Kikuchi as a wannabe Jaegar pilot with her own issues to overcome, Charlie Day as a wacked out scientist, totally obsessed with the Kaiju, and the incomparable and always awesome Idris Elba as the Marshall running the Jaegar program.
Did I mention you should go see this one? You’ll enjoy it.
Reviewed By Elektra Hammond
Elektra Hammond
Elektra lives in Delaware with her husband, Mike, and the cat herd of BlueBlaze/Benegesserit catteries. When not freelancing or appearing at science fiction conventions she travels world-wide judging cat shows.
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