: Pacific Rim
Director: Guillermo del Toro
I’m a big del Toro fan and I love robots and monster movies, so I was looking forward to this. It really is a fun flick. Absolutely outrageous special effects.
Plot-wise, there’s not much here: giant dinosaur-like monsters 300-feet tall come out of a rift in the earth under the Pacific ocean, apparently from another dimension via a wormhole, and attack our cities. So the countries of the world unite to build 300-foot tall robots controlled by human pilots that basically beat up the beasts. It’s never explained why giant robots are more effective than say, fighter jets with missiles, but you suspend disbelief and go with the flow.
But over time the monsters keep getting bigger and eventually they start to win out over the robots. Eventually there are only a handful left as mankind makes one last desperate attempt to stop the threat of the creatures for good.
The cast of characters isn’t particularly creative — we have our tough military leader, our wounded hero and his love interest, a few top gun jocks, and some geeky scientists — but there are little details that keep things interesting and moments of depth that we don’t usually get in an action movie like this. That’s mostly because of the amazing cast that includes awesome actors like Idris Elba and Rinko Kikuchi.
Overall it’s just a fun, well-done smorgasbord of visuals and action. The opening’s a little soft, being mostly narration over flashbacks, but once the story gets going it’s a blast. The robots and mosters are mind-boggling. It’s Godzilla times 10,000. I can imagine imaging this; I cannot imagine actually thinking that this could ever be filmed. Going in I was worried that we wouldn’t really see that much of the robots and monsters — I figured they’d just be in a few key scenes — but probably 50% of the screen time is robot-monster action.
In the end this is little more than a robot-versus-monster movie, but that’s not a bad thing. This is just sugary fun all the way through. It’s a guilty pleasure that takes you back to childhood midnight monster movies, but without the cheesy special effects.
Topic: [/movie] |
