Pacific Rim (2013) - Review

While it boasts spectacular visuals and a great thrill ride, Pacific Rim is a relatively forgettable affair.

Guillermo Del Toro's career amazes me. He's swept effortlessly through a fantastic filmography, ranging from Spanish fairytale horror to obscurist superheroes. With Pacific Rim, he's surprised his audience yet again with something completely different, and with enough guile to be admirable all on it's own.

The primary plot of Pacific Rim takes place in 2025, where humanity is in the last days of the war with the 'Kaijus'; gargantuan Godzilla-esque monsters that have emerged from a portal in the Pacific ocean. Since their appearance in 2013, the humans have been fighting back against the Kaijus with Jaegers; equally massive combat robots designed to engage in battle with the Kaijus. But twelve years later, with the Jaeger project on the verge of discontinuation, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) pulls together a rag-tag team of ex-Jaeger fighters, for the purpose of launching a final effort against the Kaiju's, with the intention of staving off the increasing number of monsters and using a nuclear bomb to close the portal once and for all. Of course, there are a few more details crucial to the plot, especially when it comes to incomprehensibly huge robots. The fact that they are so big means that they require two pilots in order to undertake the weighty mental toll that they inflict. And so our protagonists, the emotionally damaged Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunman) and the equally traumatised Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), step up to the plate to lead the pack.

With a plot like this, it's no surprise that Pacific Rim's most stand-out trait is it's CGI-laden visuals. The sequences depicting the fights between the Jaeger's and the Kaiju's are as enjoyably indulgent, in terms of sheer spectacle, as CGI can possibly get. This is also probably the first instance of a film where I've stopped during an action scene to think for a moment about the quality of the sound. I find it difficult to even imagine how overwhelmingly complex it must have been to compose and edit the audio for this film, so due kudos has to be issued to the editors on that front. But in terms of viewing the film from a birds-eye perspective, Del Toro has stated that he intended to create something that was 'madly in love' with it's obvious influences, and Pacific Rim does just that; the simple presence of the monsters identifies it as a tribute to the giant Japanese monster movies of previous generations. However, while keeping all this in mind, the script still makes a reasonable effort of giving considerable attention to the human side of the conflict.

While credit has to be given to Del Toro for his, quite simply put, ballsiness in going ahead with a film of this size and calibre, it also has to be given in equal measure for making a go of including actual, real characters. Often with films of this scale it's easy to lose track of the characters operating the literal giant robots, but Del Toro hasn't made that mistake here. It was likely a deliberate move to make the pilots of the Jaegers connected psychologically; as previously touched upon,this means that both pilots see into each others memories, meaning that there has to also be an emotional connection between the two. Solid efforts are given by Hunman and Kikuchi, especially considering the occasionally weak material that they are given, as well as an unsurprisingly strong performance from Idris Elba, who portrays the straight-talking war veteran Stacker. There's also a well-casted appearance from Ron Perlman as a black market-esque dealer (having previously worked with Del Toro on the Hellboy films), and a well-balanced sub-plot involving Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as conflicting Kaiju-obsessors.

But on a more negative note, Pacific Rim does have several downsides. Despite the inclusion of weight given to the actual characters, it does, for the most part, feel largely disconnected from the action that we see involving the Jaegers. At times it also feels as if Del Toro is just getting the character-related aspects of the story out of the way for good measure so that he can move straight into said-'good stuff.' And while the film does stay true to itself as an original piece of cinema rather than singularly acting as a tribute, at times there really feels as if there's a deep absence of reason for the whole thing.

While Pacific Rim dives headfirst into the definition of what it means to be a summer blockbuster, it also embodies the vices of this definition. True, it's a great afternoon thrill ride that I'd definitely recommend taking, but I'm confident that most viewers will have forgotten about it by the time they're digging into their post-cinema meal.

3/5