Movie Review: Pacific Rim

 

In a futuristic world, monsters known as Kaiju flood through a crack in the earth and wreak havoc on everything. To counter these monsters we created monsters of our own. Giant robots called Jaegers whose duel pilots mesh their minds together in a process known as drifting, are the only hope to save mankind. The plot is the key factor on if you will enjoy this film, because it says basically all the positives of the film. If you want to see giant monsters fighting giant robots, you get that and its exciting. Other than that though the film falls flat on most technical levels. The set pieces of this film is the high point of Pacific Rim, in particular the Hong Kong battle (or is it Tokyo? I don't remember). The scale of this film is massive and the way director Guillermo Del Toro crafts these scenes was worth the price of admission for me.

In simple terms it's flipping awesome, and enhance a film that is in other ways dull. The acting was stale, and I haven't exactly figured out if it's the actors or the writing to blame. Idris Elba and Ron Perlman may be the only exceptions to the rule, but their screen time is limited. The leads in the form of Sons of Anarchy alum Charlie Hunnam (Raleigh Becket) and Rinko Kikuchi (Mako Mori) are uninspiring and bland and offer no emotional attachment throughout the 2 hour run time. I also found both scientist (Charlie Day, Burn Gorman) rather annoying and I often found my eyes rolling as they spit out fast talking "logic". The more I think about it the more I realize how much the writing failed this film. No characters were given a specific arc, and any conflict was solved within minutes or were dropped all together. The character were written in the most basic cliché ways and nobody every became more than a one dimensional being. I could go on and on but most of all its easier to say the writing sucked. Even with incredible special effects and incredibly fun action set pieces, Pacific Rim is a movie that never strives to be anything more than a popcorn flick. While that is fine, it had potential to be a game changer in a day and age where originality is lost. Thank you Guillermo Del Toro for trying something I haven't seen in a long time, but you missed an opportunity.

Verdict: 3 out of 5