Review: Pacific Rim

Travelling through wormholes from another universe, kaiju (monsters) have turned up from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and are causing havoc on Earth, circa 2020. To combat the beasts, giant robots (or Mecha, if you want to be a pedantic nerd about it) called Jaegers are built, and each robot is piloted by two humans through a neural link that allows them to get inside each other’s heads (Kinda like “Voltron” but with a singular robot and only two pilots). Our chief protagonists are a potentially risky match; a pilot named Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) returning after a stint moping over his brother’s death on active duty five years earlier, and young female pilot Mako (Rinko Kikuchi), an enthusiastic but untested pilot with a personal grudge against kaiju from her childhood. Unfortunately, Jaegers are being phased out, but commanding officer Pentecost (Idris Elba) has gathered a small rogue group in Hong Kong with the remaining Jaegers available to give it one last go at kicking kaiju arse. Meanwhile, biologist Charlie Day goes to radical lengths to test his theory that there may be a way to read the kaiju’s thoughts, though his colleague Burn Gorman has serious doubts. Ron Perlman turns up as Hannibal Chau, an underworld figure in Hong Kong who specialises in selling Kaiju body parts. Clifton Collins Jr. has a small part as a comms guy for the base, whilst Max Martini and Robert Kazinsky play a couple of allegedly Australian father-son Jaeger pilots.

 

It’s hardly perfect, but I knew I was going to like this 2013 Guillermo Del Toro (“Cronos”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Hellboy”) film from the moment the word ‘kaiju’ was used about a minute into the film. As a fan of Toho’s “Godzilla” films, how could that not warm my heart? One of the monsters even reminded me of Ebirrah from “Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster”. This is big, dumb fun, and I enjoyed the hell out of it, I only wish I saw it sooner!

 

Del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham (“Clash of the Titans” being his only other notable screenwriting credit) aren’t reinventing the wheel here or curing cancer. It’s humans piloting robots to take on monsters. No mess (well…), no fuss, just two hours’ worth of geeky fanboy fun and me likey a lot. Hell, I didn’t even mind that Yank actor Max Martini didn’t quite nail an Aussie accent (he gives it a damn good try), or that co-star Robert Kazinsky sounded every bit an Englishman (he even had a bulldog- what the hell?) rather than an Aussie. OK, so I minded it a bit (Kazinsky that is), and a little of Charlie Day’s Bobcat Goldthwait-voiced shouting went a helluva long way, though he is involved in an interesting subplot, I must say. And then Ron Perlman turns up to chew the scenery and wear the single most awesome pair of gold-capped shoes I’ve ever seen in my life. Seriously, I want a pair, like yesterday. His first appearance alone is hilarious, and his presence is invaluable in a film like this (Not to mention a handy tip-off to who directed the film). And did I mention the robots taking on monsters? ‘Coz there’s that, and it’s awesome. It reminded me of a superior version of “Godzilla: Final Wars”, actually (not to mention any Godzilla film featuring Mechagodzilla), and you can tell the filmmakers are fans of kaiju films, albeit not so much the 50s-70s period that I personally favour.

 

Although a bit dark at times, it’s wonderfully shot by cinematographer Guillermo Navarro (“Cronos”, “From Dusk Til Dawn”, “Breaking Dawn Pt. 1”), and the battles show what the “Transformers” films could and ought to have been. You can actually see what’s going on, for starters. Like “Sin City” and the sorely underrated “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”, this looks like a graphic novel directly transplanted onto the silver screen (albeit not as much so as those two earlier films). The size and scope at work here are really well conveyed, these are some big arse monsters taking on some big arse robots. Excellent music score by Ramin Djawadi (“Game of Thrones”) too.

 

Charlie Hunnam isn’t the most interesting of lead protagonists, but Perlman helps pick up his slack alongside several others. Burn Gorman is jolly good, old-fashioned nerdy British scientist fun despite being paired with Day most of the time. Their scenes can get a little bit shrill, but that is mostly Day’s fault for overpitching it a tad. Clifton Collins Jr. is always solid (if not in the film quite enough), as is the charismatic Idris Elba, doing an Al Mathews ham sandwich special as the film’s paternal/authoritarian figure. Rinko Kikuchi, who despite not having the greatest grasp of English, plays a fascinating character and conveys her inner rage effectively. She’s certainly more interesting company than Hunnam, and you just had to have a Japanese character here.

 

This is clearly a fanboy film made by fanboys for fanboys, and to give it a wordy, in-depth critique is somewhat beside the point. It’s dumb monster fun for people who like dumb monster fun, and few others. If you don’t like Japanese monster movies, anime or manga, you likely won’t get into this. It’s your loss, though, I had an absolute, unashamed blast. Stunning to look at (one of the best-looking films of 2013 easily), and a much better film than I had anticipated. It’s certainly light years ahead of Roland Emmerich’s “Godzilla” and Michael Bay’s “Transformers” films. This one gets it right, and although not a great film, it’s the kind of film that reminds me why I love watching movies. I love the “Citizen Kane”’s and “12 Angry Men” of the world, but sometimes you just want to see giant robots and giant lizards beat the fuck out of each other, OK?

 

Rating: B-