Pacific Rim (***)
Directed
by: Guillermo Del Toro
Starring:
Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Max Martini, Robert
Kazinski, Ron Pearlman, Clifton Collins Jr.
Seen:
August 6th 2013
***
Out of ****
I
never saw many monster movies growing up, so I have very little to measure Guillermo
Del Toro’s Pacific Rim against, but of the few monster movies I have seen and
can remember, Pacific Rim definitely stands out. The movie is incredibly well
produced, and is an absolute blast from beginning to end, as Del Toro strikes a
perfect balance between taking the story seriously and kicking up a bit of
self-conscious comedy from the depths. The plot is enormous, and so are the
monsters and robots in this movie – there is a sense of awe that Del Toro was
aiming at (as inspired by Francisco Goya’s The Colossus), and I believe that he
more than hits it with almost every frame of this highly entertaining science
fiction tale.
When
humanity comes under attack from an enormous alien race that rise out of the
Pacific Ocean through a portal from another universe called the Kaiju, we did
not simply capitulate. We hit back in spectacular fashion by building the
Jaegers, robotic machines as enormous as the Kaiju. The Jaegers are piloted by
not one, but two pilots, as the mental burden is too much for one human to
handle, and these pilots need to share a very rare and specific physical brain
trait to qualify as the possible heralds of humanity’s salvation. This is all
explained in short, but a few times in the movie, as the main plotline depends
on knowledge of this. The battle has however started to get more difficult, as
the Kaiju got more and more powerful (and enormous), while some Jaegers were destroyed
as the Kaiju kept coming. The nations of the Pacific Rim has decided to rather
build huge walls around their coasts in efforts to keep the Kaiju out, and the
last four remaining Jaegers are taken to Hong Kong, where the last section of
the wall is yet to be finished.
The
main character is Raleigh Becket (Hunnam), who left the Jaeger program years
earlier after his co-pilot and brother was killed in a battle with a Kaiju –
the resulting mental trauma of experiencing his brother’s death while mentally
hooked up with him to the Jaeger breaking him. When the pilots of the Gypsy
Danger are lost however, the Jaeger commander Stacker Pentecost (Elba)
approaches Becket as he believes he is the Jaeger program’s only chance at surviving
and eventually continuing even after the walls are built in efforts to
safeguard humanity. Initially Becket is not interested, but he meets a
potential pilot in Mako Mori (Kikuchi) and things escalate to a point where she
must be pushed into the field with Becket, the two of them operating Gipsy
Danger, when all the other Jaegers are compromised when two enormous Kaijus
attack.
The
movie is a visual spectacle, and I think most people would agree, as I have no
memory of ever seeing a robot beat and alien with a full-sized oil tanker,
among many other “massive” events. Director Del Toro finely balances the human
development with the monster madness and delivers a thoroughly entertaining
disaster/monster movie that not only looks bloody impressive, but has a good
story and great human development as well. Pacific Rim is a definite success,
and I am excited about prospects for a sequel.
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