by Joseph Rossi
Pacific Rim is everything I’ve ever wanted to see in a popcorn movie. It’s huge, loud, thrilling and emotional. It doesn’t dumb down character in service of the spectacle. The film embraces its characters as well as its size cumulating in a genre movie lover’s paradise. This isn’t stuffy, pretentious or dry. This is pure genre cinema. This movie was made by a movie lover for movie lovers. It embraces its genre roots and never lets go until the final frame.
Monstrous Kaiju emerge from the bottom of the Pacific and wreck havoc on the world. Mankind counter attacks by building Jaeger’s, massive robots that require two cerebrally linked pilots to control it to fight the enemy.
That’s the basic plot and all you really need to know. This is not an origin story, a sequel, a prequel or a brand name. This is an original work created by one of modern cinema’s master visionary directors. This may not be Guillermo Del Toro’s best movie (that would be the masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth) but it’s, I think, his most enjoyable, guilt free, balls out, throw everything including the kitchen sink movie he’s ever made.
This film is huge. The battles between the robots and monsters are epic. And they’re not the frantic kind of battles we’ve come to expect by other hack directors. Del Toro stages these fights elegantly and creatively. The effects team pulled out all the stops here and I’m glad they took over a year to complete the work; the quality shows. It looks great. Each creature has such detail that would make the creature effects masters of old Hollywood envious.
The screenplay allows for some emotion and character development to seep through. The actors are all having a ball with this material. These are not big name stars. The film doesn’t need them. Del Toro populates his movie (as all of his other films) with character actors. Charlie Humman, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day are a few among the great cast of interesting faces chosen to play here. Del Toro regular Ron Perlman makes a hilarious appearance too.
This is a film from a real storyteller who understands monster movies. He takes elements from the works of Ray Harryhausen and classic Godzilla / Monster films and pays homage to them by respecting the genre and not spoofing it. This is one fun movie. See it on the biggest screen possible. You won’t regret it.
