Dir. Guillermo Del Toro
131 Minutes
Rated PG-13
Watch Trailer
Guillermo Del Toro, despite having a pretty hit-or-miss filmography, is still one of my favorite guys working in the movie business today. His Spanish-language horror fables are all incredible (from the alt-vampire flick Cronos, to the incredible ghost story The Devil's Backbone, to his masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth) but his American movies usually lack that same level of artistic vision. Pacific Rim is by far his biggest film to date - an ode to Japanese monster movies featuring giant Kaijus from the center of the Earth and huge man-controlled robots sent to fight them. The mechs, called Jaegers, need two pilots to control them using a "neural handshake" where you share all your memories with the other person. Despite that heady concept, for those hoping this would be Del Toro's take on serious sci-fi you may be disappointed. Pacific Rim is like watching a child mash their $180 million action figures together for 2.5 hours.
After a solid montage/introduction to the world of Pacific Rim, it becomes immediately apparent that the acting on display is god awful. The two leads, Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi, have completely stilted dialogue and form an unearned relationship during the course of the film. There's never a chance for them to have a real "moment" together (they're in deep love right away) and there didn't seem to be much in terms of emotional stakes going on - a shame considering they both have some great credits to their name, including Sons of Anarchy and Babel, which Kikuchi was nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar. Even Idris Elba as the main commander guy was uninspired and boring. The only likable characters were some of the supporting cast, including Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as two comical scientists and Ron Perlman as a black market Kaiju part dealer. It was only in their few scenes that we got to see the fun, inventive side of Del Toro at play. Everything else was bland and basic.
The action, although impressive on a technical scale, was just loud, repetitive, mind-numbing destruction. All of the fights looked exactly the same to me, along with most of the Kaiju. Just more Cloverfield-looking things with Transformer-looking things in a dark neon-lit rainy city. I was hoping to see some really cool, unique monsters and designs here (especially with Del Toro's Hellboy II being so full of great creature work), but they just look like the same stock alien creatures you've seen a thousand times. The human connection to the Jaegers is an interesting concept but nothing interesting is done with it. There was a chance for some truly deep Inception-like mind-bending to be had, but the only thing that happens during the brain synchronization is a generic blue-tinted dream flashback sequence. Sure the robots looked dazzling in the rain punching and slashing at behemoth monsters, but it wasn't enough to carry my interest the whole time. Seeing this film in IMAX 3D is almost essential, because unless you're paying for the big huge spectacle of it all, the story certainly won't make up for anything.
I love Del Toro - his imagination, his style, and his love for cinema. But for the love of god get this man better material to work with. I felt like I was watching somebody else play a video game. There were glimpses of Del Toro's twisted, weird, [at times fun] sensibilities (like during the middle of an action scene, a Jaeger just manages to set off a Newton's Cradle sitting on a desk - inches from destroying it), and if you want to see something that amalgamates every sci-fi cliche into one package, you may even be entertained. The influences are certainly all over the place here, from The Matrix to Ultraman, but it just felt like one big shiny mass of metal to me.
Rating: C-
Bonus - Related Internet Video:
I could listen to Del Toro talk all day; here he is talking in depth with [Canadian reporter] Jian Ghomeshi about the film.
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