Film Review – PACIFIC RIM

If you grew up in the ’80s like I did, and a fair, if not an unhealthy portion of your TV viewing time was spent on animated fare like Voltron and Robotech, Pacific Rim may be the answer your adolescent prayers. Guillermo del Toro’s big screen giant robots versus giant monsters sci-fi extravaganza does not disappoint as far as taking CGI-heavy battles to a new level of intensity and intelligent storytelling in an age when Michael Bay’s Transformers series had until now set the technical high bar for 3D mech FX-heavy acrobatics.

The plot is straight forward enough and easily best described by its tagline “In order to fight monsters, we created monsters of our own.” But to elaborate further: In the future an inter-dimensional rift in the floor of the Pacific Ocean offers safe passage for invading giant alien monsters known as Kaiju to lay waste to cites all over the Earth. With casualties reaching the millions and conventional weaponry proving ineffective, humanity constructs giant mechanical warriors called Jaegers to counter the growing alien threat.

The human Jaeger pilots must jockey as neural pairs, one controlling the right hemisphere, the other the left of the 25 story high gladiators in order to effectively combat the ferocious threats. Sons of Anarchy‘s Charlie Hunnam leads the cast as Raleigh Becket, a troubled pilot who’s still dealing with the loss of his brother years earlier in combat with a Kaiju (which means “Giant Beast” in Japanese). Idris Elba gives another stellar performance as Stacker Pentecost, the no-nonsense leader of the international Jaeger strike force. Few can deliver and pull off with the necessary weight and bravado a military pep rally speech capped off with the soon to be iconic “Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!” Attention Bill Pullman’s Independence Day President Whitmore: You have been served.

The mind blowing visuals put forth come courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic. The jaw dropping battles between beast and machine have never been realized like this before on the big screen. For Rim‘s target audience, which I am unabashedly a part of, much of what we see may have been pre-visualized since our childhoods regarding the behemoths’ battles, but it all seriously comes to deafening and tangible life when seen through del Toro’s capable eyes. The director takes complete joy in staging sequences with epic scope and gritty weight you’d never think possible. Seriously who can’t marvel at witnessing one of the massive mechanical gladiators double fisting train cars to pummel the living bejeezus out of one of the alien beasts?

I had three summer 2013 movies on my “insanely excited to see” list, Pacific Rim being the last of them to be released. I still find it hard to believe I left the theaters following the first two with a feeling of meh befuddlement at what I had just seen, instead of the “gee whiz” wonderment I had hoped for. The third time is a charm here with Pacific Rim, and when I reached the closing credits I felt like I had been taken back to my adolescent self right after a great episode of Voltron, Robotech, or a Godzilla Saturday afternoon movie double feature.

Much credit should be given for the human side to the story and the solid cast that pulls off everything that happens when the film is not in full throttle mode as an FX heavy extravaganza. Charlie Day brings his signature It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia cadence to Dr. Newton Geiszler, a high strung scientist who finds much nerd joy in analyzing the Jaegers’ internal organs. Day’s gift for comedic timing keeps the film from sinking too deep for too long into dark drama. del Toro’s Hellboy himself Ron Perlman is also recruited here to do what he does best playing Hannibal Chau, an extravagant lord of the Hong Kong underworld who makes his fortune from harvesting and selling various parts of recently slaughtered Jaegers. The human cast, their stories, and the simple but nonetheless layered clever plot all add to Rim‘s big pluses that keep this from being a mindless one-dimensional big budget B-movie.

So let’s talk the presentation. Hands down, IMAX 3D is seriously the only way to go. The kinetic energy, the spectacular big screen eye candy and the excessive (but welcome) primal pandemonium is a big screen triumph in tandem with both formats. There is nothing small about this movie. Go big. Go IMAX. You can also add del Toro to your list of directors who work with 3D with flawless results. Not once was I taken out of the moment with a sequence that didn’t benefit, or worse was hindered, by poor conversion. Rim boasts one of the best conversions (shot digitally with the RED EPIC camera) I have ever seen for such a quick cutting, fast paced film. The past year has enjoyed improvements in leaps and bounds in regards to the technology. Sure its still vastly over utilized, but a year makes a huge difference in the big screen presentation. del Toro is never at a loss for a beautifully framed shot, and the film’s extensive 3D conversion accentuates his layered canvass. Shallow depth of field makes the simpler wide shots epic while the battle scenes gain that much more of a deadly and mighty punch with the added dimension.

To write off this film with simple on the surface comparisons to Transformers, Godzilla, or various anime series would not be fair here, even though those respective franchises’ DNA is easily detectable throughout. del Toro has drawn obvious influence from many sources to mash up their strongest and most familiar elements into intense high-tech big screen sparring matches in the ocean or in between towering buildings in Hong Kong. Pacific Rim is a fan boy homage made by a fan boy, and includes both overt and subtle nods to elements that made the climatic ending to battles on any given episode of Voltron exciting to viewers.