Pacific
Rim is the most fun I’ve had at the movies since The Avengers. It is one of those rare films that knows exactly what
it’s supposed to do and is committed to doing it. There’s nothing deep or
important about it; it’s just a story about giant monsters fighting giant
robots, and that’s enough.
The story: in the near future, a
rift opens deep in the Pacific ocean, bringing forth gigantic creatures dubbed
kaiju, who begin ravaging cities along the Pacific coast. In response, humanity
creates enormous machines called Jaegers (German for ‘hunter’), piloted by two
humans via a mind-melding technique called “drifting.” At first the Jaegers are
successful enough that people stop taking the kaiju seriously, but then new and
more powerful kaiju begin appearing and the Jaegers suddenly become outclassed,
causing the world governments to abandon the program and pour their resources
into a giant wall project. The story proper begins when Marshall Stacker
Pentecost (Idris Elba) recruits retired Jaeger pilot Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam)
to join a last-ditch effort to end the kaiju threat once and for all.
After a seemingly endless series of
grim, self-important blockbusters all trying to be as ‘realistic’ and serious
as possible (Man of Steel, Iron Man 3, etc.), Pacific Rim is unabashedly out
to entertain. Director Guillermo Del Toro knows perfectly well that no one goes
to a movie about giant robots fighting monsters expecting a serious, thoughtful
drama about, I don’t know, environmental stewardship, or the
military-industrial complex, or race relations, or what have you. They go
because they want to see monsters and robots beating the snot out of each
other! Del Toro delivers on that promise with a number of epic showdowns, the
most notable being a two-on-three battle in Hong Kong featuring such conceits
as a Jaeger picking up shipping crates to use as brass-knuckles and swinging a huge
ship like a baseball bat, and a kaiju suddenly unveiling wings and flying into
the stratosphere. The action is frenetic and occasionally brutal, but all done
with a fairly light touch. Despite the PG-13 rating, this might be the most
kid-friendly action film of the year; there’s no sex or nudity and very little
swearing. Besides, I think all but very young children (especially boys) will
love it; it’s the kind of movie that was made for them, which is something we
don’t see very often these days.
Mixed in with the spectacular
action are a number of very entertaining jokes (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman as
the comic-relief scientists are a scream) and some surprisingly old-fashioned
heroism. For instance, at one point Raleigh’s jerk-jock rival, Chuck (Robert
Kazinsky) crudely insults him and his female co-pilot, Mako (Rinko Kikuchi). Raleigh
responds by beating the ever-loving crap out of the guy to force him to
apologize to her (remember that scene in Man
of Steel that I complained so much about? This is how that scene should have played out!). Yeah, most heroes
would beat up the arrogant jock, but how many would do it to make him apologize
for insulting a woman? That’s the kind of hero I can really root for! It
reminded me of Douglass Fairbanks’s The
Mark of Zorro from all the way back in 1922. How many blockbusters remind
you of Douglass Fairbanks?
There’re also some nice father-son
moments between Chuck and his more pleasant and honorable father, Hercules (Max
Martini, and yes, that is his character’s real name), and even an early scene
with an unnamed father and his son beach-combing in Alaska conveys a sense of
the unassuming masculinity that is so often lacking in today’s films.
There’s even a charmingly
understated love-story. Since the pilots share minds and memories, Raleigh and
Mako can’t help but grow close to each other. Refreshingly, however, with the
fate of the world at stake, they stay focused on the mission and only
occasionally address their growing attachment to one another. This also pays
off in a few delightful moments, as when Mako catches sight of a shirtless Raleigh
through his open door, closes her own in embarrassment…and keeps watching him
through the peephole.
In short, Pacific Rim has pretty much everything you might want from a summer
blockbuster. That doesn’t mean that it’s perfect, however. In particular, the
characters are (with one exception) all pretty flat and unremarkable. They’re
pleasant company, but they’re pretty much just types: the hero, the female
sidekick, the mentor, the rival, the nerds, etc. You can pretty much predict
exactly what’s going to happen to each of them from the moment you meet them.
This may have been a conscious choice (let’s face it; sometimes you just want unremarkable ‘type’ characters),
but it limits the film nonetheless.
Similarly, the movie takes the time
to establish four separate Jaeger crews and set them up as uniquely powerful
and talented warriors…and then wipes out two of them in quick succession. I was
unpleasantly reminded of a similar dynamic in Alien vs. Predator, where the three Predators were reduced to one
within about five minutes of their encountering the Aliens. It’s not as big a
problem here (since we’re supposed to understand how dangerous the kaiju have
become), but it is kind of annoying.
Pacific
Rim reminded me at times of two films I particularly love: Independence Day and The Avengers, but in both cases I’d say
it suffers from the comparison. Independence
Day, for instance, did a much better job of suggesting a world-wide crisis
bringing many disparate people together in a desperate bid for survival. There
we had the President, a Marine, a crop-duster, and a cable repairman among the
leads. Here we pretty much just have a group of soldiers, some of whom come
from different countries, but all of whom have more or less the same goal and
background. And, honestly, Charlie Day, Rinko Kikuchi, and even Idris Elba just
can’t compete charisma wise with Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, and Bill Pullman (that,
and Pullman got a much better rousing, climactic speech than Elba, whose big
speech left me kind of cold).
The
Avengers, meanwhile, benefited from a large cast of established characters,
all played by immensely charismatic actors reading dialogue from one of the
wittiest writers in Hollywood. This meant that the scenes of them just hanging
out and bickering were as much fun as the scenes of them fighting an alien
invasion. The human scenes in Pacific Rim
are pleasant and entertaining enough, but it knows better than to trust them
too long without a monster-robot fight.
The monsters themselves, while
cool, just didn’t grab me. Maybe I’m spoiled from all the vivid, character-rich
kaiju of the Godzilla and Gamera films, but none of these kaiju made much of a
lasting impression. The one that comes closest is a giant, acid-spitting
bat-creature named Otachi, but she just can’t match the raw power of, say,
Gyaos (whom she most closely resembles). In the end the heroes are confronted
with a ‘Category Five’ kaiju; the biggest on record. But even it fails to do
more than mildly impress, partly because we hardly even get a good look at it.
Anyway, such are the notable flaws
I found in Pacific Rim, but none of
them amount to anything like a serious problem. It’s not as good as The Avengers or Independence Day, but it is in the same spirit and you might say a
worthy companion to both. It’s just good, clean, old-fashioned fun. You remember ‘fun’? That thing that
summer action movies were supposed to be before they got all edgy and relevant?
On that subject I should mention
the one character I alluded to above who stood out as the most memorable of the
cast: a black-market trader called Hannibal Chau (Del Toro veteran Ron
Perlman), who is so hammy, so over-the-top badass that he very nearly steals
the show. And in a show about monsters fighting robots, that’s saying
something. I like Perlman in pretty much anything, and here he’s an absolute
scream from the moment he appears to his final (post-credits) bow.
I once read a review of the Ultraman series saying that it was
“about as much fun as you’re likely to have legally…and even among illegal
pleasures, it rates pretty high.” That’s pretty much what Pacific Rim is like. This is definitely one of the most satisfying
film experiences I’ve had this year (at the moment I’d say only Monsters University rivals it): the kind
of wonderful, wholehearted movie that comes from a talented group of filmmakers
just kicking back and having fun with a subject they love.
Final Rating: 4/5. Not perfect, but
the most fun you’ll have this summer, guaranteed.
